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Showing posts with label Unusual instruments. Show all posts

Music for Homemade Instruments - A Decade of Debris (1988)

(Dolmance, email me at mrfab3@hotmail.com re: your computer issue. Much thanks to reader John for the tech support.)

Like the band featured in this blog's previous post, The Hoosier Hot Shots, this group also performs on homemade instruments. However, one group is considered "novelty" and the other "avant-garde." It's all rather arbitrary, and class-ist. This band isn't quite as funny as the Hoosiers of course, but they are plenty tuneful, with nice toe-tapping compositions sometimes derived from Indonesian gamelan music, something ex-members of this group would explore further with the (I believe) still-running band of fellow New York arty-smarties, Gamelan Son of Lion.

Music for Homemade Instruments - A Decade of Debris

I just wish I could see these instruments. I could only find one photo (right), and no videos.

Despite their academic background, this is fun stuff, not just self-indulgent banging around - hence, not a completely unlikely companion to the Hot Shots. The track "Inside the Compound" is even a kind of mutant blues. An excellent album that should have had greater distribution. This was a cassette-only release. So, yeah, this file is taken from a tape, but still sounds pretty good.

Music for Homemade Instruments- A Decade of Debris (1988)

a1 Glyptodont (Skip La Plante)
a2 Inside the Compound (Geoffrey Gordon)
a3 Streetsong (Alice Eve Cohen) [not safe for work!]
b1 Ball Lead (Rolf Groesbeck)
b2 Native Cat Songs (David Simons)

Ross Bolleter's Music For Ruined Pianos

A reader left a comment today: "How does one download from Google on a Mac? I cannot figure it out..." I'm not a Mac-intologist. Anyone?
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Rather than take old, decrepit pianos and attempt to repair and tune them, Australian composer/improviser Ross Bolleter makes new music out of "ruined" pianos. Bolleter approaches each piano as a singular entity, utilizing each instrument's lack of standard tuning, missing keys, broken strings, etc. to create strange, haunting, stirring sounds that would not be possible to make on a new piano. Which seems like a much more logical approach than taking every sound-making thing on the planet and forcing the limited range of the Western scale on it.

The music on this album hardly sounds like "piano music." The lengthy opening track is meditative loveliness, ranging from Asian gong sounds to birds calls in the background (this really is a 'field recording') to horror movie atmospherics. The remaining short tracks sound similar to John Cage's prepared piano works, but while Cage's pieces were gamelan-inspired and strictly written, these are free and jazzy. So ingenious one wonders why no-one thought of doing something like this before?

Ross Bolleter - Secret Sandhills and Satellites (Pieces For Ruined Pianos) (2006)
(UPDATE 7/15: Missing track now in file.)

Count Otto hepped me to this cat via this article about "Touring Australia's Piano Graveyards."

Pardon my Amazon cut-and pasting:

ROSS BOLLETER ruined pianos (+ accordion on 7)

1 - SECRET SANDHILLS - 28:00
2 - AXIS - 6:47
3 - DEAD MARINE - 6:10
4 - AND THEN I SAW THE WIND - 3:22
5 - CHORUS LINE - 1:39
6 - SAVE WHAT YOU CAN - 2:40
7 - GOING TO WAR WITHOUT THE FRENCH IS LIKE GOING TO WAR WITHOUT AN ACCORDION - 4:23
8 - TIME WAITS - 5:59
9 - COME NIGHT - 2:02
10 - JAUNTY NOTES OF PADDOCKS BRIGHT - 4:22
11 - OLD MAN PIANO - 1:46

"All digital recordings made in Australia around Perth and Alice Springs 2001-2005. Pieces for ruined pianos and pianos on the edge of ruin... The main work, inspired by an Aborigine painting, is the 28-minute Secret Sandhills, a generally slow-moving work spliced together from performances on six ruins. There are also 10 shorter and generally faster Satellites, some of which were performed on two ruined pianos simultaneously. Fresh new sounds from decaying old instruments."

T.V.O.D.: 2015

I have obviously fallen off my new-post-every-few-days schedule, but yes, I'm still alive (and well), and have been receiving your always-appreciated emails, musics, DVDs, etc. There's no shortage of material for this here web-log. Guess I've been too busy watching TV...

How did I not see this before?! A recent live version of the greatest song ever about animal homosexuality is up on Vimeo:

Tom Wilson Weinberg - "Lesbian Seagull" / interview

You know that Mr. Will Grove-White is the right kind of people since he's a member of the mighty Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. But brilliantly performing the Beach Boys on nose flutes, and no other instruments?! One can only bow down: "We're not worthy!"

And here's your WTF? of the day: a nine-minute long concert, also on Vimeo, by an
Odd-stralian named, er, Dumbshit:

DUMBSHIT live 4/24/15

Our source for all good things Down Under, Buttress O'Kneel, has played with Mr. Dumbshit a few times, and even after having been an acquaintance of him for a good decade or so, is still a bit perplexed by his, shall we say, lack of regard for traditional musical standards. How self-aware is he? One wonders "...if he is and just doesn't care, or if he's kidding, or if he's doing some kinda meta-kidding-outsider combo... he normally plays some weird indian stringed instrument, this is the first time i've seen him play a casio - adds a whole other element. with classic songs like "my housemate's a fuckwit" and "exposing myself to the moon", he's always fun to watch."

This guy's gotta make some recordings.

HELLavision

I could give some background on these videos...but why bother? They won't make any more sense if I did. So I'm just gonna hit you with three of the greatest, most incredibly WTF-iest things I've seen/heard lately. Prepare to question your sanity!

#1:

#2 (thanks to maniac Francis C for passing this one on to us):

and, perhaps most disturbingly, #3:

MORE STRANGE INSTRUMENTS FOR JESUS

If the GlassDuo album I posted last week had you hungering for more musical wine glasses...

My review of the first Musical Betts album posted here three years ago also applies to this one: "The Musical Betts were a husband-and-wife duo who played (mostly) instrumental versions of gospel songs on such instruments as cowbells, marimba, musical saw, slide guitar, and sleigh bells. And vibraharp, which I think is like a vibraphone. Really cool stuff, but alas I know nuthin' about 'em...It's a bit odd hearing melodies played on instruments like cowbells performed not as Spike Jones-like comedic music, but in a stately, emotional manner."

Well, that was easy. I have nothing further to add except that we know a little (very little) bit more about these two, thanks to this album's liner notes: Mrs. Betts was a "college teacher" in Michigan before she met Rev. Clarence, but we don't even learn her first name! Also, this album's volume level has to be one of the lowest ever. Nice relaxing music for when that tryptophan kicks in.

The Musical Betts "The Golden Bells"

UPDATE: reader Richard L. writes "The low level may be result of a very astute engineer. The bells have an incredible amount of very high frequency (even ultrasonic) sound levels. Early analog audio equipment could not handle this at normal levels resulting in a lot of audible artifacts (partial erasure of the tape, thumps, and distortion). Also, the VU meters would not respond to the quick attack of the bell clapper hits. This is the sad voice of experience speaking. One solution was to run everything at -10 dB to get more transient headroom."

THE CLASSICS PLAYED ON 57 WINE GLASSES

I am quite delighted to announce that the crucial WFMU show "Bodega Pop" will devote all three hours of its weekly programming to this here web-log as our 10th anniversary festivities continue. This Wednesday 7:00PM Eastern time on Woof-Moo's "Give The Drummer Some" stream (not the over-the-air broadcast) the party commences. Your host-with-the-most Gary Sullivan helms a blog also called "Bodega Pop", and its tales of international music-collecting derring-do fills me with insane envy. Damn, this guy's got a great collection. And now, my latest Bandcamp discovery:

AllMusic said about today's album: "In the running for strangest novelty item of the year [2007], A Drop in the Glass is nevertheless an impressive display of musicality." Indeed. GlassDuo from Poland have constructed what they claim is the world's largest wine glass instrument, some 57 pieces strong. Yes, wine glasses. You know how you can wet your finger and rub it along the rim of the glass to produce a musical, if somewhat squeaky, tone? Well, these two have taken this old idea to a virtuoso level. Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition" is one of those classical war-horses that I'd never really given much thought to, but that was before I heard the familiar opening "Promenade" performed on something I am now drinking out of.

Other highlights: Chopin's "Prelude" (tho I prefer Serge Gainsbourg's remake "Jane B"), the clanging of metal percussion (a trash can, perhaps?) halfway into "Great Gate of Kiev", and the medley of hits from Grieg's proto-goth "Peer Gynt." After a while you may forget the unusual methods used to produce these sounds, and just listen to it for it's musical merits. It's available for purchase, or listen to the free stream:

GlassDuo: "A Drop In The Glass"

An mp3 for ya:

GlassDuo: "In The Hall of the Mountain King" (excerpt from track 10)

I'm finally listening to some proper classical music. My mother will be so proud.

Bernie Green Plays More Than You Can Stand In Hi-Fi

Hey, it's this blogs' 10th anniversary in a couple of weeks! What are we doing? Where's the party at? I have no time to plan anything, but I'll show up. Heck, I'll bring the beer.

By request I've re-upped lots more Zoogz Rift than you can stand, not necessarily in hi-fi.

Bernie Green only made a few albums as bandleader, but they are eccentric indeed. The fact that one of them was done in association with "Mad" magazine should tell you something. This release isn't really Space-Age Pop, swing, or exotica, nor are we exactly in Spike Jones novelty territory either. I don't know what to call it - big-band circus music, maybe? RIYL: orchestral Raymond Scott, or Carl Stalling.

The exciting percussion-fest "Railroad Train Samba" shares album space with the self-explanatory "Saxophobia," the ambitious (and quite insane) "Concerto For Calliope," and a cartoonish version of the Cuban standard "The Peanut Vendor." Perhaps fearing that this was indeed more than his listeners could stand, Green cools out with some low-key easy-listeners ("Summer," "Idyl") that aren't at all funny or eccentric, tho I do dig the noir mood of "Caesar's Soliloquy."

Big thanks to windy for this one!

Bernie Green Plays More Than You Can Stand In Hi-Fi (1957)

A1	La Sorella
A2	Mister Peepers Theme
A3	Ragging The Scale
A4	Railroad Train Samba
A5	The Virtuous Orchestra Suite
A6	Caesar's Soliloquy
A7	National Emblem March
B1	A Frangesa
B2	Saxophobia
B3	Concerto For Calliope
B4	Summer
B5	Double Blues
B6	Idyl
B7	The Peanut Vendor

Ambient-Abstract-Noise

For those moments when you need to get away from the idea of music as, y'know, tunes, what with all those distracting rhythms, melodies, lyrics and other fancy accouterments, and you just want to, as Cage said, let music be itself: tracks from recommended new(ish)* releases that soothe body and soul in a colorful sonic bath. And by "soothe" of course I mean that this ain't no New Age audio wallpaper, but can get rather dark and weird at times.

27 minutes of: ambientabstractnoise

1. Philip Jeck "1986 Frank Was 70 Years Old" (from "Surf") - Turntableism as ambient sound collage; guest vox from Woody Woodpecker.

2. Back Magic "Future Graves" (from "Chorus Line To Hell") - Duo's guitar/drum lo-fi racket sometimes resembles actual rock music, and quite nice rock music at that; then we get to this chilling instro, based on a keyboard and air-raid siren sound effects; the apocalypse has never sounded so appealing.

3. Carolina Eyck & Christopher Tarnow "10,000 Bells" (from the as yet unreleased "Improvisations for Theremin and Piano, Vol 1") - Another duo, but they're German, and have had music lessons. Eyck in fact, studied under Lydia Kavina, Leon Theremin's grand-niece and former member of Messer Chups.

4. Allen Ravenstine & Robert Wheeler "Nocturne" (from "City Desk") - YES!! The once and future synth wizards of the mighty Pere Ubu have teamed up for two albums ("City Desk" and "Farm Report") of pure unadulterated analogue electro improv sci-fi soundscape loveliness. "At points one or the other musician would leave the room, letting the antique synthesizer fill in his parts until he returned."

5. Chris Campbell / Grant Cutler "Song 2" (from "Schooldays Over") - The all-too-brief album is a meditation on Ewan MacColl's 1961 Irish folk ballad about kids moving straight from school to backbreaking labor; the song is teased apart and beautifully reconstructed on such self-descriptive tracks as "Pump Organ, Gongs, Balloon Bassoons." Marimbas, glockenspiels and kotos also join the keyboards in beautiful melancholy.

6. Chris Campbell "Water Mirror" (from "Things You Already Know") - Campbell's really been hittin' it lately, what with his work for the crucial Innova label, and not one but two excellent recent albums. On this one, a fairly large cast perform both on standard stuff and on invented instruments and oddities like propane tanks, psaltrys, and singing bowls for something in between ambient, minimalism, and freak rock. So nice.

I also quite liked THIS.

* Except for the Philip Jeck which came out in 1998 but I only just discovered it.

Bandcamp Is The New Cassette Culture pt.3

More indie album wonderfulness courtesy of sites like Bandcamp (and remember, you can always listen for free) from geniuses that would otherwise go unheard because no label in their right mind would ever give 'em a record deal. This time we're spotlighting colorful cartoonish craziness - after all, "novelty music" is not a bad word 'round these parts. To quote one of the album titles featured here, let's have fun:

Twink the Toy Piano Band "Miniatures Vol. 2": I can unhesitatingly recommend this brief, kooky album, performed on toy piano and other whimsical sound-making thingies. I actually think this is one of Twink's finest efforts of toy-tronic pop instrumentals. Price: FREE

1000 Needles: "Osiris": More toy tunes, this time from a band using modified Nintendo and Gameboys playing 8-bit melodies while guitars and drums rock along. Some great songs in this 7-track set that, as on the stand out tracks "Error 537" and "Monument 101," skillfully mix rinky-dink electronics with rawk power. Price: $4

The Invertebrates "Let's Have Fun": Not a new release this time, but a re-issue of some classic New Wave post-punk weirdness from a criminally underrated San Fran combo who we first featured here a few years back when we posted a vinyl rip of their "Eat 'Em While They're Young" EP. That one's long gone off-line, but maybe it will get the re-issue treatment like this gem, which sports concrète and backwards tape effects, dada lyrics that sometimes sound like they're being sung verbatim from magazine articles, B52s-ish femme vox and electric organ, and on one of the album's catchiest songs "Atilla The Hun," Jews harp, and a crazed percussion break. Price: $7

The Kominas "Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay": I guarantee you've never heard any punk rock like this before: a Muslim American band hitting us with stuff like the Sex Pistols-quoting 'Sharia Law in the U.S.A,' campy sound bites, a great surf-punk song ('Ayesha') that ends with a Muslim chant sound-collage, and a catchy funky rap song called (heh heh) 'Suicide Bomb the Gap.' Apart from courting controversy (and they did indeed get media coverage that scarcely described their music), there's actual good sounds here that break out of the punk mold, e.g.: the unique, rhythmically complex, kinda Caribbean-sounding 'Layla' (no, not that one). Price: FREE, but you'll probably end up on all kinds of watch lists for downloading it.

Carton Sonore "Modarn": And now for something completely different - a collection of musical fragments only seconds long that are meant to played on shuffle play, effectively creating a new song every time. Like Eno's "generative" works, it's never the same twice. Price: 1€

Thiaz Itch "Frivolurium": Like Carton Sonore, another funny Frenchman. The description tags tell the story: "carnivale, circus, comedy, electro, space-age-pop." Utterly delightful modern vaudeville cut from the same zany cloth as Twink...not to mention Perrey and Kingsley, Spike Jones, and Monty Python, who's "Bright Side of Life" gets brilliantly covered here. But this album is no child's play - it gets almost proggy in it's experimentation: the polka-esque "Splooshy il Chiocciolo" features everything from Chipmunk vocals to heavy rock guitar to fruity horns. My current Favorite-ist Album In The Whole Wide World. And remember, "don't step on my foreskin!" Price: 5 €

ODD-STRALIA pt 3: The Invented Instruments of Rod Cooper

Another strange-music-making Australian ("odd-stray-alien," as our expert in such matters Buttress O'Kneel says) is the chap in the above video, Rod Cooper, a metal-worker who makes fantastic plunky/boingy/screechy hand-built metal instruments. Seeing him live would be the optimal way to experience him, I would imagine, considering how, to quote B'O'K: "he used to play in subterranean stormwater drains and stuff, secret illegal gigs that utilised the tunnels' natural reverb to the fullest." And of course, you'd get to see these gizmos up close.

He has a few albums for sale, but here's one you can listen to via Bandcamp as Klunk, a duo with John Bell on vibraphone and percussion:

Klunk: "Metalic"

Many of these improvised instrumentals are nice indeed, with Cooper coaxing all kinds of atmospheric, almost ambient soundscapes out of his Highly Resonant Object. No harsh industrial pounding here. The interplay between vibes and HRO on "Aluminum" is quite lovely, and the dramatic "Columbium" is compelling. I love jazz vibes, but on some tracks the aimless wandering vibraphone doesn't do much for me. Tracks like the sparse, haunting "Stainless" are more successful.

Here are two samplers, both almost 6 minutes long:

http://www.divshare.com/download/25367194-1bb

http://www.divshare.com/download/25367195-e86

And then there's:

Interview

Artist Statement - Like the man says: "Comfort Through Dissonance"

TWINK The Toy Piano Band: "Happy Houses"

Confounding the naysayers who don't consider the toy piano a "real" instrument, Boston's master of toy-tronica Twink, has just released yet another album, his eighth one I believe. It is appropriately entitled "Happy Houses," as you just can't make sad music on toy pianos. (Although I'd love to see some mopey goths try, wouldn't that would be interesting?)

At first glance this appears to be a somewhat modest effort: it's short (8 songs in a half-hour), doesn't have any gimmicks like sampled kiddie records or guest remixers that are found on prior releases, or the kind of elaborate artwork Twink is known for. Just a man and his toys (and electronics) simply backed by a few other cats on guitar, banjo, horn, flute, bass, and a mystery instrument called a 'playett.' But have no fear: this is some of Mr. Twink's best songwriting yet. The first two songs, "Close To Home" and "Ostrich Hop" (with an most un-childlike free-jazz sax solo) are instant Twink faves. "Gumdrop Glitter" has a '70s Moog disco feel. As the album progresses, things get more odd and experimental. Couldn't find any info on the instrument called the playett featured on the exotic waltz "Turtle Trap," but something on that song sounds like an mbira, the African thumb-piano, and something else sounds like a horn man playing a garden hose. "Interloodle" has an unidentified cartoonish flatulent sound that I really like - too bad the song's barely a minute-and-a-half long. The wacky electronics on "Crocodilly" move things into Perrey/Kingsley territory, and despite the ravey trappings of the epic "Frankentoy," I can't imagine any DJ having the nerve to play a song so festooned with clinking, clanking sound effects. Their loss, as it's one of the most ambitious things Twink has ever tried. Toy-prog?

Git tha album off of Twink's happy web-house. Click tha song title to be whisked off to DivShare land:

Twink - "Close To Home"

The FREE! web-release "Miniatures" is also pretty recent, and pretty wonderful.

Bandcamp Is The New Cassette Culture...

...tho compared to the '80s/'90s tape underground:
- the sound quality of indie music sites like Bandcamp is usually a lot better than those hissy tapes
- even if you don't buy you can listen for free
- you don't have to go to the bother of sending away for items via the mail: they're right here! Go get 'em!
So consider this post the equivalent of when magazines like 'Option' used to have tape reviews.

- Convivial Cannibal "Buy The People Afford The People": An album as good as the band name; Absolutely fascinating unclassifiable L.A.-area weirdness that conjures up an air of dark esoterica by mixing live instruments with what sound like old ethnic music samples, children's music boxes played backwards, and unidentified sounds; the audio equivalent of a Joseph Cornell shadow box. Sometimes it resembles traditional music when it's just singing and guitar, but they're both buried under effects to the point of illegibility. "Avant garble" they call it. Numerous other-worldy videos and the new "Iniquitous Ubiquitous" album (check the hypnotically droning "There Are Greys Outside Your Window") are likewise recommended. Price: name your price.

- Dr. D.R. Barclay "One Note Mixtape": I don't believe this. Some mad genius has taken every one-note guitar solo he could find from the rock era and mixed them together into two 7-minute mixes. Some I recognized (Neil Young, The Ramones) and plenty I didn't. Hilarious and utterly mental. Price: $3.

- "Roncheras" v/a: Traditional Mexican styles like the polka-esque ranchera and the melodramatic mariachi get cooked into a delicious burrito of electro, rock, experimental, even 8-bit post-modernism for a furious fiesta. Highlites include Dr. Almeja's rockin' 'Ek Chuac,' and Dada Ket's cartoonishly crazy 'LA Costenida.' Muy fun. Price: free.

-The Hathaway Family Plot "Worry": a horrible year of illness and family deaths inspired this brief but powerful electro/noise suite. Individual tracks like "I Should Be" work well on their own, but the album is best experienced as a start-to-finish whole.

- Jaw Harp Potential "My Boyfriend, Your Cat": Need a little light relief after "Worry"? Try this: three wholesome girls from Iowa who sing five simple, catchy songs on accordion, ukulele, toy piano, glockenspiel, and harp (not a 'blues harp,' an actual harp) that are cute without being overly cutesy. Better then most Beat Happening albums. Really quite wonderful. Price: free.

Oh man, I've got at least 6 more albums I was gonna review...err...think I'll wait until another "issue" of our little 'zine here, this post is getting too long. (Press 'eject.')

TOTALLY NUDE EXOTICA

By request, the Irish folk mashup collection "Straight Outta Ireland" is back up.

When my unbelieving eyes saw that parts of the US were going to be below -50 F (factoring in wind chill), my mission was clear: post that exotica compilation I'd been sitting on. You people need to warm up, and what better way to do that then with this collection of steamy, sultry, pseudo-tropical musics rescued from singles and otherwise non-exotic albums, not unlike our previous "Savage Exotica" comp.

Like that collection, this features folks you wouldn't expect to be making tiki tunes: The Residents? Sun Ra? (His biography "Space Is The Place" confirms that he was a fan of exotica maestros like Les Baxter.) Sinatra singing with a Hawaiian group? A Rodd Keith song-poem? You bet your aloha. The "Fifth Beatle" Billy Preston, even, as well as famous bandleaders like George Shearing & Xavier Cugat, and contemporary revivalists like Combustible Edison, Cocktails with Joey, and the man whose track gives this album it's name, Fred from the B-52s. Plenty of unknowns, lounge acts, and private-press records in here, too. And "Noisy Village" and "A Night In Bedrock Forest" are bizarre, sound-effects-laden novelties, presumably parodies.

TOTALLY NUDE EXOTICA

01 Superions - Totally Nude Island [w/Fred Schneider]
02 Exotic Adventure - Mel Henke
03 Caravan - The Three Suns
04 Tahiti - Rodd Keith
05 Exotic bird-bird - Dickie Harrell
06 Ferry Across The Mersey - Billy Preston [sounding more like "Ferry Cross the Amazon", this is from 1965, years away from Preston joining the Beatles, or his '70s solo fame]
07 cults percussion ensemble - baia [feat. a then-teenaged Evelyn Glennie]
08 Slow Hot Wind (Lujon) - The Trilogy [a Florida lounge act covering Mancini]
09 Poinciana - Art Van Damme [one of many versions of this oft-recorded exotica standard performed here by the world's foremost (only?) jazz accordionist]
10 The Residents - Syx Things to a Cycle (part 1)
11 Solar Drums - Sun Ra & His Mythical Science Arkestra
12 Tabou - Lecuona Cuban Boys [very early 78 rpm version of song that would be a perrenial exotica standard, often spelled "Taboo"]
13 Jungle Fever - The Mighty Accordion Band
14 Frank Sinatra - Bali Hai
15 Tropical Espionage - Cocktails with Joey
16 Noisy Village - Bobby McFadden and Dor ['Dor' is a pre-fame Rod McKuen]
17 Michael Farneti - In the Jungle [sleazy '70s lounge disco!]
18 The Veldt - Combustible Edison
19 Bahía - Xavier Cugat & his Waldorf Astoria Orchestra (with Bing Crosby)
20 Fred Flintstone - A Night In Bedrock Forest [near as I can tell, this has nothing to do with the actual "Flintstones" show]
21 ブンガワン･ソロ (Bengawan Solo) - Kiyohiko Senba and his Haniwa All Stars
22 patrick vian - oreknock
23 george shearing - caravan

Behold! The Wheelharp

I love the creepy, creaky sound of the Wheelharp, a newly invented instrument developed and sold thru L.A.'s Antiquity Music company. But rummaging thru the sofa cushions for spare change will probably still leave me a bit short of the $10,000 needed to buy one.

It would be great to own one, tho - playing it's keyboard (a very strange-looking round keyboard) rubs the strings like a violin bow, so it's like having a string quartet at your fingertips. A scant 3 1/2 minutes of music on Wheelharp has all that's been recorded so far, but it is very nice indeed:

https://soundcloud.com/antiquitymusic/sets/wheelharp-audio-samples

Apparently it was used in the soundtrack for a recent film called "Devil May Call," but there does not appear to be a recording available.

Old Friends in the Zither Sound

Yeah, yeah, I know: everybody plays air-zither along with their favorite 'zither heroes,' they even play the Zither Hero video game, the zither-bass-drum lineup has been the standard for decades, and yet here we are again, posting another zither album. We're so damn trendy. I apologize, because I realize that our culture's obsessions with the zither has made so many other stringed instruments unfairly obscure. Perhaps other instruments have potential, but no-one knows because they're considered uncool? Like the "guitar," a six-stringed instrument of Spanish origin, whose strings are strummed or plucked by hand. Since it's held in the hands instead of being laid out on a table like the zither, it's sure to draw guffaws from the too-hip. Who knows, maybe in some bizarro-world alternate universe, it's the guitar that's the most popular. Nevertheless, this album of fun, peppy, all-instrumental Euro-cheese is another example of why all peoples of the world hail the zither as the King of All Instruments. Zesty percussion, accordion, sleazy electric organ and cool vibraphones add to the belated Oktoberfest (Decemberfest?) festivities.

Peter Schwarz - "Alte Bekannte im Zither-Klang"

A1 Ramona
A2 Down By the Riverside - the familiar hand-clappin' American gospel song
A3 Schöner Gigolo - hey, it's that Louis Prima song, "Just A Gigolo"
A4 Tanze mit mir in den Morgen - love this Latin-a-gogo groover
A5 Bye Bye Blues - one of my fave ol' Tin Pan Alley standards
A6 Estrellita
A7 Wochenend und Sonnenschein
B1 Winke winke
B2 In einer Nacht im Mai
B3 La Paloma
B4 Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein
B5 Das machen nur die Beine von Dolores - Great hotel lounge psuedo-calypso
B6 Das alte Spinnrad
B7 Du schwarzer Zigeuner
B8 Good Night, Ladies

Danke to herr Gene M!

BeerBottle Percussion, NewWave Music-Boxes, Avant-Catholic Masses

Last year's assortment of experimental/alt-classical/unclassifiably weird new releases received a succinct two-word comment from reader Outa-Spaceman: "Astonishing stuff!" Like last year's roundup, these are new(ish) commercial releases that are well worth your hard-earned dollars/francs/pounds/heads-of-cattle/etc., with album moods ranging from Carton Sonore's charming toy-pop and the krazy kovers of Hanna Peel and Misfit Toys, to chin-stroking Afro-tronica and new avant-chamber music; from modern-day high holy masses to Neon Lushell's creepy "No Religion" - we're covering a lot of territory. And when was the last time you heard music performed entirely on beer bottles? Prepare to be astonished!

Astonishing Stuff!

1. Paddy Steer - "A. Welson Senior II": reader Phil C. hepped me to this Mancunian cat with this description: "He's a crazy one man moog/ glockenspiel/drumkit band with a penchant for paper maché robot/creature heads. I saw him at a tiny little festival a couple of years ago (he was on after the band I was with) and it was the best and strangest thing I've ever seen. For the whole of his set I felt like I was having an acid flashback." One of the best albums I've heard in recent years. Was very hard to pick representative tracks, they're all doubleplus good. Watch the vids on his label site!
2. Misfit Toys - "Alone Again Naturally": from the ridiculously entertaining debut album "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is," a mad collection of '70s covers performed on banjo, bowed banjo (?!), marimba, oboe and clarinet, among others, radically reinventing Stevie Wonder, Chicago (as you may have guessed by the album title), Tony Orlando and Dawn, Black Sabbath, Talking Heads, the Gilbert O'Sullivan song featured here, and more. Transcends novelty, but still a must for any Maniacs' party.
3. Neon Lushell - "Black Confetti": I really liked these Midwesterners debut "Modern Purveyors of Filth and Degradation" and their new one (to be released Oct 8) is just as good - two-discs bulging with experimental ambient evil, as dark as goth or metal but without those genres' kitschy cliches.
4. Mammane Sani et son Orgue - "Bodo": hypnotic '70s Space-Age organ instrumentals from Niger, Africa; who knew such things existed?
5. Gunnelpumpers - "Bottley Functions": The six musicians of this Chicago-based avant/improv group perform here only on beer bottles. From their new one,"Montana Fix."
6. Gunnelpumpers - "Buffalo Jump": groovy percussion with three double-basses; that's like, what, 6 basses total? (boom-tish!)
7. Hannah Peel - "Electricity" - Peel's splendid 4 song EP "Rebox" performs '80s hits by Soft Cell, New Order, Cocteau Twins, and the song featured here, OMD, on sampled antique music box. May be corny as hell, but I love it.
8. Phil Kline - "John the Revelator - Sanctus": We reviewed this NYC composer's Christmas music for massed boom-boxes previously, and reader James C. recommended the Catholic inspired "John The Revelator;" the eclectic music sometimes doesn't immediately suggest a mass, tho it does get a bit Gregorian at times; quite lovely.
9. Kurosounds - "Manège d'éléphants": Fantastic hypnogogic ambient soundscapes; looped delayed instruments echo rhythmically as dreamy sound effects drift in and out; owes as much to psychedelic dub as it does to Minimalism.
10. Bruce Cropley - "March Into April": This Aussie's excellent album "Modal Podal" is almost all instrumental, exploring a wide variety of styles that aren't necessarily all that weird; which makes it all the more unique - he's not afraid of risking his avant credentials by throwing some perfectly pleasant jazz fusion-type stuff in with the almost Zappa-like quirkiness; makes one realize how even "strange" "experimental" music can be predictably formulaic.
11. Bruce Cropley - "Modal Podal": Copley's is also the man behind the super-swell "Quirky Music" on-line radio station
12. Juan Blanco - "Musica para Danza": Was I surprised to find this album in my PO box - "Nuestra Tiempo" is a retrospective of Cuba's electronic music pioneer, Juan Blanco. Cuban electronica? As in, with those infectious Latin rhythms? Yes, on one almost 14 minute -long track. The rest of the album doesn't offer much mamboing, just tasty analog bloopiness, like this track from 1961, the very first piece of electronic music ever recorded in Cuba, available for the first time.
13. Tino Contreras - "Santo": Perhaps not as historically startling as the Blanco album, but "El Jazz Mexicano de Tino Contreras" is another worthy reexamination of an overlooked Latin American artist from decades past; this one unexpectedly veers from psych Afro-Latinisms to exotic international styles, to such oddities as numerous tracks from his groovy '60s a-Go-Go Catholic mass, like the track featured here that mashes up Latin (in the original sense of the word) chanting with Brubeck-esque cool jazz and sleazy electric organ. Que pasa?!
14. Paddy Steer - "Stun phlogiston"
15. Carton Sonore - "The Mexican Roads": The latest from France's adorable "naive music" toy-pop maestro.

Le Enfant Terrible: Music Made from Pots, Pans, and Toys

Manchester band Le Enfant Terrible sent me a link to their new album, describing it thusly: "It's effectively 'World Music' but not quite. It's music made from pots and pans, and toy instruments bought off street venders around the world." I thought: no way. But the opening moments of the really good tune "jucomeba comebi chi" convinced me otherwise. Still, that description may not be entirely accurate, as there do seem to be some "proper" instruments on these somewhat exotic, mysterious, percussive instrumentals, but maybe they just really know how to play their toys. Recommended for fans of the Forgotten Fish Memory Orch. Picks To Click: "jucomeba comebi chi", "wasashi tono cupora."

Name-your-price/listen/purchase here:

Le Enfant Terrible: daeli cane

(Apologies if this blog is getting a bit neglected: trying to catch up on work, summer holidays, etc. Many more silly/naughty/filthy old 78s coming soon!)

RE-POST RE-QUESTS REDUX...AND DELIGHTFUL XYLOPHONE NOVELTIES

The New Age pseudo-Hindu bluegrass album Hindu Kush Mountain Boys is back up, by request. I say! Does anyone have: The Full Life All-Stars, "Ya No Hay Beatles," The Musical Betts, March Fourth 2012. They were requested and I cannot find them - they sank with both my hard drive crash and the heavy-handed Mediafire/Rapidshare take-downs. Muchos grassy-ass! And now let's listen to a dazzlingly talented Australian boy/girl team who play "music from 'the golden age of the xylophone,' classic jazz and pop standards from the 1930s and 40s and novelty hits from all time periods!":

STICKS AND TONES

The 78rpm roots of the Sticks and Tones sound can be found in the intimidatingly vast archives of the US government Library of Congress' National Jukebox project: dozens of sides by xylophone legend George Hamilton Green, Master of the Marimba (aka the 'mellorimba'), streaming for free under his various guises, to whit:

Green Brothers Novelty Band

or over 60 (!) recordings with various groups, mostly the All Star Trio:

George Hamilton Green

Many more antique oddities and novelties coming your way soon, courtesy of Yours Truly, and a fine Maniac with a large assortment of bizarre vintage recordings. Am still organizing our collections, but hopefully in the coming weeks the 'Silly 78s' project will get under way. It should be simply ripping!

Cathegory