I was wondering what to do for my midweek post this week when a thought struck me: why not feature one of the CDs that I have recently bought from a charity shop. It seems such an obvious idea I'm surprised nobody has thought of it before frankly.
The CD I picked out of the pile is "Bengali Bantam Youth Experience!", the second and last album by the Leeds-based outfit Black Star Liner.
The album came out in 1999 and was sufficiently well regarded that it was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. That was when Talvin Singh won the prize, so it was a big year for the Asian Underground (and also for Stereophonics who were inexplicably shortlisted as well).
More recently Uncut ranked it as the 465th best album of the 1990s. Based on a couple of listens and having reviewed the list I believe it deserves to be at least in the 300s. Here are a couple of my favourite tracks from the album. That's Jah Woosh guesting on "Pink Rupee".
The album that appears right at the bottom of Uncut's list of the 500 best albums of the 1990s also came out in 1999. I'll hand over to your friend and mine Conan O'Brien to introduce the performers.
Word reached me at the end of last week that folk-popster Photo Ops (or Terry Price as his friends know him) has a covers album coming out next month. Called "Opening Up To Strangers", it is a selection of songs mostly from the 1960s and 1980s and mostly fairly well known.
This encouraged me to dig out his 2023 album "Burns Bright", which I enjoyed when it came out but haven't listened to since. It definitely rewards further listening. There is a bit of a Jimmy Webb influence in some of the melodies and arrangements - no bad thing if you can pull it off - and maybe a hint of Camera Obscura, with whom Mr Opportunities had toured shortly before making the album.
You can find "Burns Bright" on Photo's Bandcamp page along with the rest of his back catalogue. "Opening Up To Strangers" doesn't seem to be available for pre-order at time of writing, but to give you a rough idea of what is in store all the videos feature songs covered on the album.
We end the week with a report on what may be the world's mellowest title fight. It was held in 2013 to determine which is the best plucked multi-stringed instrument. The proceedings were captured on an album called "Clychau Dibon".
In the red corner representing Wales - Catrin Finch on the Welsh triple harp.
In the blue corner representing the Casamance region of Senegal and latterly Nottingham - Seckou Keita on the kora.
After a hard fought contest Ms Finch won on string countback (the triple harp's 75-100 strings massively outnumbering the kora's 21-25) but most judges felt there was nothing between them in terms of quality. Clychau Dibon won multiple awards and was described by one eminent reviewer (me) as the plucking equivalent of the Thriller in Manila.
The two selected tracks clock in at 8 and 7 minutes respectively so any devotees of the cult reading this may prefer to wait until Monday before listening to them.
1000 Violins then put themselves forward as the next challenger. They should really be disqualified on a number of grounds - only 4 strings per violin, bowed not plucked etc - but after some genius matched them up with the Chinese Cultural Revolution Ballet I had to include them.
Not a mystical incantation but a gig line-up. That said I haven't tried chanting it and I'm not sure I want to risk doing so.
In the unlikely event that you have read any of my gig reviews that pop up here every now and then you will have noticed that the Shacklewell Arms in London's fashionable Dalston appears fairly regularly. It is one of my favourite local venues and there is always something interesting on.
One of many good things about the venue is that they will often lay on free gigs in conjunction with small labels and promoters, particularly in quiet times of the year like August. This month they are doing so in a big way with what they are calling their Label Mates festival. Mister F and I were there on Sunday and have two more gigs lined up for next week.
Sunday's show was well worth every penny that we didn't spend. There were three acts all of whom were associated in some way with Moof magazine in Brighton - our headliner had to decline an encore to make sure they caught the last train back there - and all were entertaining.
First on the bill was Christina Deva who describes herself as a "vocal based artist" which appears to mean ululating along to drones. She has an impressive voice but things dragged a little for my personal taste. The performance definitely benefited when she got out her bouzouki to add some variety and texture to the sound.
Next up was Rose Io, the only one of the three I was previously familiar with at all as I have a few songs by her former band Rokurokubi in my collection. Rose's solo work is pretty similar to that with the band, no bad thing if you like lots of songs about death, ghosts and the afterlife performed in a style slightly reminiscent of Lavinia Blackwall (solo and Trembling Bells). I do.
Rose is an engaging performer and I enjoyed her set a lot. We were also treated to a mini 'set within a set' by her alter ego, a homicidal bunny rabbit called Ecto. Ecto's song outlining different ways you can kill and dispose of family members was one of the highlights of the evening.
Rose played a lot of songs that will appear on her first solo album titled "Autumn Automaton" due out in October. Ecto is apparently planning to release an EP of their own later in the year.
Our headliner was Lau Ro, a Brazilian expat who treated us to a short but very sweet set of mellow samba that would not have been out of place on last week's visit to Brazil. They were accompanied by a cellist and keyboard player and the cello in particular enhanced the sound very nicely.
Lau Ro previously led the band Wax Machine whose albums I am just discovering and rather enjoying. As with Rose, there isn't a significant difference between the band and their solo work. Think of it more as a natural progression than a new direction.
Here are some before and after examples of the main two acts' work. All performers and their previous bands are on Bandcamp (except for Ecto The Bunny Rabbit). Just click on their names for the links.
This is the second Monday in a row we are featuring Nigerian music with a link to Fela Kuti. I only realised that after I had finished preparing the post. Please don't mistake this for a series.
Odion Iruoje was the #1 producer in Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. He is the man who signed Fela to EMI Nigeria and co-produced many of his early albums, and his list of production credits on Discogs reads like a who's who of Nigerian music of that era - Sonny Okosun, Tunji Oyelana and the Lijadu Sisters to name but a few.
Mr Iruoje only ever released one album under his own name but its a real cracker. Originally released in 1983, "Down To Earth" was reissued by the good people at Soundway Records in 2016. It makes a great way to start a new week.
I tried to find another musical Odion for the video slot but met with no success - the former Watford and Manchester United player Odion Ighalo does not appear to have joined the ranks of footballers who have made records. I did find an Odia though. Obviously you are getting the terrible hit but it turns out she also did a decent ELO cover.
We are on our third continental tour now. To date we have covered 85 countries. For many of those countries I have to search and scrape to find enough decent music to justify a post, but very occasionally I have the opposite problem of having more than I know what to do with.
Brazil is one such example. Even after taking the precaution of hiving off some of my favourite Brazilian musicians into a separate post I was still overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of what remained.
Apart from the first two tracks today's songs were selected by an elaborate process of closing my eyes and dabbing. If I did this again tomorrow there are many others that might be included instead but what we have ended up with are ten top tunes, most of which will encourage the shaking of one or more body part.
The first two songs are included because of their significance to the Tropicalia movement which revolutionised the music and art worlds in Brazil in the late 1960s and was seen as such a threat by the military dictatorship in power at the time that many of the leading lights were arrested or exiled. The musical wing started with Caetano Veloso's self-titled 1968 album which opened with the track "Tropicalia", named after Helio Oiticica's 1967 installation.
Later in 1968 Caetano teamed up with Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa and others to record "Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis", which is considered to be the manifesto of the Tropicalia movement and which regularly tops charts of the best Brazilian albums. From it I have picked the Os Mutantes track that provides the second part of the title.
Before Tropicalia came along all the cool kids were glued to their TVs every Sunday night watching "Jovem Guarda" which from 1965 to 1968 transformed the musical taste and fashion sense of Brazilian teenagers and made stars of its presenters. One of these was Erasmo Carlos who went on to enjoy a long and successful career. Today's track comes from his 1972 album "Sonhos e Memórias" and is a beefed up version of a song originally released in 1964 by fellow Jovem Guarda star Roberto Carlos (no relation to either Erasmo or the footballer of the same name).
Our next act is another with a link to Tropicalia. Miguel De Deus was singer and guitarist with the psych practitioners Os Brazões, who as well as making some great records in their own right also served as Gal Costa's backing band in the late 1960s. Fast forward to 1977 and Mr De Deus released the album "Black Soul Brother" under his own name. I have selected the title track on the grounds that it is magnificent.
We will skip ahead two decades now where we find Molejo winning hearts, minds and feet with their pagode sound. Pagode is a variant of samba which developed in Rio de Janiero in the 1980s, hence the title of this track from Molejo's 1996 album "Não Quero Saber De Ti Ti Ti". Personally I can't really tell the difference, but apparently they use a banjo and a tan-tan rather than a cavaco and a surdo. So now you know.
The 1990s also finds Carlinhos Brown - up until then the leader of the percussion ensemble Timbalada - taking his first steps as a solo artist. Mr Brown is one of my favourite Brazilian artists and I am pleased to say he is still going strong today, having picked up some Latin Grammys and an Oscar nomination for writing "Real In Rio" (from the soundtrack of the animated film "Rio") along the way. Today's tune comes from his 2017 album "Semelhantes".
Our next artist also has an connection to the Academy Awards having been one of the stars of the 2002 film "Cidade De Deus" (City of God) which received a number of Oscar nominations. We are of course talking about Seu Jorge, who has maintained a parallel career as an actor and singer for the last 25 years, combining the two of them in "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" where he performed David Bowie songs in Portuguese. That was not without its charms but personally I prefer his own stuff, like this cracker from 2011's "Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 1".
"Is it rock? Is it reggae? Is it funk? Beiradão? Fusion? What's that sound?". These are the questions posed on the Soundcloud page belonging to Os Tucumanus, a band from Manaus who have been on the scene since 2006. I found this track on an excellent 2014 compilation called "Rolê: New Sounds of Brazil".
If any of you were wondering what the answers to those questions are, according to the always reliable Google Translate it is music made by "an authentic, pavulous, idealistic, and unusual being". I think we can all agree that it is the level of pavulosity that gives Os Tucumanus' music its distinct sound.
We are nearly at the end of the waffling now, but we can't leave Brazil without sharing some sertenajo music with you. Essentially their country music, it is incredibly (some say inexplicably) popular. The commercial boom happened in the early/mid 1990s when literally thousands of male duos starting emerging from the southern plains.
One of the biggest were Rick & Renner who during the course of their career sold over 10 million albums and performed to an estimated 225 million people. This tune with its synths and riff nicked from "Da Da Da" dates not from 1982 as you might expect but from 2007 (on their album "Coisa De Deus"). Its cheesy but I have a soft spot for it.
We have something much more up to date and cutting edge for the MAR slot. In 2013 the Recife based producer/engineer Buguinha Dub teamed up with local scenesters Yorujah to create an album they called "Aduba Duba Dub". On this track they are joined by Luiz de Assis on vocals and I think they all deserve a round of applause.
I only noticed when I got to the end of the list that it was all men, with the sole exception of Rita Lee of Os Mutantes. So let's try to redress the balance with a selection of some of numerous fabulous female singers from Brazil.
Later in the week we will arrive at the fourth destination in our musical tour of the Americas and it is a big one - Brazil. Trying to sort that post out has been a big challenge simply because I have so much Brazilian music - well over 500 tracks just on my shuffle with many more on CDs and the hard drive.
To help with the editing process I decided to take out three gents who are probably my favourite Brazilian artists, each of whom have featured on these pages many times over the years - the father of samba-rock, Jorge Ben, the king of samba-soul, Tim Maia, and the boss of them all Gilberto Gil.
But having done that I had second thoughts. The reason they are my favourites and keep turning up here is because they are all bloody marvellous. Who am I to deprive you of more of their magnificence?
This is the compromise. A track from each of the Big Three today to warm you up for the proper Brazil post on Friday. The selected tracks are new to the blog even though the gents themselves are not.
And now a video apiece. Contrary to the titles at the start of the Jorge Ben video the song is "Taj Mahal" and it definitely wasn't ripped off by Rod Stewart.
Like many musicians with famous parents, Seun Kuti probably struggles to step out from their shadow. He is probably still best known as Fela's son. Unlike many of his peers, however, he makes excellent records and deserves to be admired in his own right.
Stylistically Seun hasn't fallen far from the tree, perhaps unsurprisingly as he inherited his Dad's old band Egypt 80 when Fela died in 1997 (he was 16 at the time). His sound has been getting a bit more diverse over time though and his latest album "Heavier Yet" features collaborations with the likes of Kamasi Washington, Sampa The Great and fellow nepo baby Damian Marley.
"Heavier Yet" and its predecessor "Black Times" can be found on Seun's Bandcamp page but his earlier albums cannot. So to help you plug the gap here is a track apiece from "From Africa With Fury: Rise" (2011) and "A Long Way To The Beginning" (2014).
Listeners of a delicate nature are warned that "IMF" contains multiple rude words. Suffice to say that according to Seun MF doesn't stand for Monetary Fund.
Originally this post was going to be called "Like Father, Like Seun" but I changed it to give me an excuse to include this video. Not that I really need an excuse of course.
I treated myself to a day out in Canterbury earlier in the week and very nice it was too. A potter around the town, a stroll along the Stour. There was a cricket match on but I only made it as far as The Cricketers.
The cathedral was the highlight as always, it really is spectacular with a huge amount of history attached. The £20 entry fee might suggest that Jesus' line about the rich finding it harder than the poor to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven was a load of guff, but to be fair each ticket is valid for a year. When I left I gave mine to the first impoverished wretch I saw.
Many years ago, roughly midway between Chaucer and today, there used to be a scene in Canterbury. Here is a playlist featuring some selected scenesters. True to the spirit of the typical Scene output, it goes on way too long and some of the fiddlier bits could happily have been cut out completely.
Links stay up for a month or so. If you are an artist or copyright holder and want me to remove the link, or if you want to get in touch for any other reason, e-mail me on leggies27@hotmail.co.uk.
