Aug 1, 2009

Episode Fourteen

What more can I say about Dungen, I love this band and I can’t wait to finally see these guys play live later this month in LA. Tio Bitar's three minute instrumental Intro is a beautiful concoction of their sound into one concise piece of music. Devoid of anything outrageous, it's a smooth, polished, and dope entrance for the band and a good indication of where the rest of the record is heading.




This album is absolutely fantastic. It really is great music to lose your self into. the music is full of influences, from fuzz guitar to jazz interludes. It's all over the place in subtle style shifts, but still retains a psychedelic feel to it. "take a trip to the center of your mind"






This San Francisco band fearlessly combined early electronic experiments with an acid rock sound somewhere between Jefferson Airplane and United States of America and they were definitely ahead of their time. At times incredibly dark with a sharp attention to detail, their Cauldron LP is an essential psych masterpiece.




Somewhere between psychedelic rock, delta blues and old-timey folk lies the Entrance Band. The liner notes say it was recorded 16 track onto one inch tape and it sounds tremendous, close attention reveals real depth and richness with cool instrumentation and arrangements.





Its Baris motherfucking Manco. Nuff said! Totally riveting stuff that blends some traditional Turkish influences with the psychedelic sounds of the late 60s & early 70s. Including all that fuzzed out rocking funk, and an also fantastic melody. What’s also fascinating about the music is that it incorporates sounds from the East and the West, and still sounds dope. The vocals are effectively melodic and the songs tuneful, with Turkish and other parts Eastern string and wind accents, with both hand percussion and drums, and guitars that mix rock, funk and psychedelic.


Mustafa Ozkent's Orkestrasi is a Turkish funk machine. Genclikle ile Elele is their strongest offering and has recently been reissued for those of us who weren't around when it was originally released in 1973. Wait, did you say "Turkish funk? Oh yes, that's right. Hints of Anatolian folk themes mix with in-the-pocket rhythms and spikes. Great great stuff, really. The recording quality isn't the best, but that almost makes it seem even more authentic.

This is an awesome collection put together by the same people who gave us Welsh Rare Beat and Folk Is Not A Four Letter Word! The world of 70s European rock has given us some key funky kernels over the years, but we'll be the first to admit that the long-haired, rock-based, album-only, non-English, import-only genre has been pretty tough to dip into from our side of the Atlantic. The tracks here are lean, mean, funky, and often have a distinct jazz undercurrent in some part of the instrumentation.





This collection of tracks comes from the bungalow of legendary Indian masala film director Anandji V. Shah. The director, along with his brother Kalyanji, not only wrote and directed dozens, perhaps several hundreds of films (no one knows for sure, not even them), and scored them as well throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s. These were not just any Bollywood movies - these were masala "mixed spice" films, the Bollywood version of cheap action and blaxploitation movies, B-movies, or James Bond-type thrillers. Producer Dan the Automator had DJ Josh Davis and Nana Simopoulos add some nu-groove beats and a few extra sitars to the already drenched in groove and rhythm tracks. It wasn't so much to update them as to celebrate what was already happening in the music. Here is surf music, blues, go-go, discothèque, psychedelia, cheesy R&B, and exotica all wound together with spoken bits from the films that accent the wildness of these pieces.


Sixtoo is the main project of a Canadian hip hop DJ, MC and producer Vaughn Robert Squire. He was born on January 29, 1974 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He rose to prominence in the mid-90's underground hip-hop scene initially as a member of Sebutones, along with Richard Terfry (Buck 65). During that time he worked with Sage Francis, Stigg of the Dump, Moka Only, Mr. Dibbs and other members of Anticon Records. The Psyche Intangible CD was released in 1998 on Metaforensics. Quoted by Sixtoo, "The Psyche Intangible was the first record that I really considered to be a Sixtoo record. It’s the first record that has very signature writing in it, and it’s the first record that really starts to show off the production type that I think I’ve grown into. Dark sparse beats, hard drums, and all those things that I tend to gravitate towards."


One of the greatest albums ever by studio genius David Axelrod! The album's one of Axelrod's first on his own - cut for Capitol Records at a time when he was working with some of the label's biggest selling soul acts - like Cannonball Adderley and Lou Rawls - turning their already-successful sounds into super-hit material by adding some nice funky touches, and excellent baroque production. This album lets Axelrod fully explore his talents for larger studio arrangements, and complex yet soulful instrumentation. The record is subtitled "an anthology of awareness after birth, based on the 18th century poems of William Blake" -- and it features incredible arrangements conducted by Don Randi, played by a host of excellent LA jazz and studio players. The overall sound is spacey and dark, with nice touches of funk, and plenty of cool instrumental passages that have been sampled over the years by hip hoppers and other producers.

Set 1

Dungen - Intro
Ultimate Spinach - Mind Flowers
Fifty Foot Hose - Fantasy
Gaslamp Killer - Robots
Entrance - Grim Reaper Blues
Shocking Blue - Love Buzz

Set 2

Timothy McNealy - Sagittarius Black
Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra - Song For David
Bombay The Hard Way - The Good, The Bad, and the Chutney
Joseph Koo & Wang Fu Ling - The Killing Fight
Baris Manco - Iste Hendek, Iste Deve
Meconium - Limp Love
Bullion - Long Promised
Sixtoo - Marching

Set 3

Fikret Kizilok - Haberin Var Mi
Baris Manco - Derule
Okay Temiz - Denizalti Ruzgarlan
Mazhar Ve Faut - Turkuz Turku Cagir
Mogallar - Anadolu Pop - Halicte Gu
Mustafa Ozkent Ve Orkestrasi - Dolana Dolana
Cem Karaca - Suya Giden Alli Gelin
Okay Temiz - Penguin
3 Urel - Omur Biter Yol Bimez

Set 4

Salah Ragab - Dawn Intro
David Axelrod - The Sick Rose
Peter Schirmann- Lagerfeuer
Nobody - Leading
Lorez Alexandria - Baltimore Oriole
RSD - Pretty Bright Light
Cedric I'm Brooks - The Light of Saba