ARANOS making love in small spaces (1999)

Czech artist Petr Vastl, known to many for collaboration with Nurse With Wounds, is mainly a virtuoso violonist with an experimental view to music.He can create incredible sounds with violin (and not only) that recall numerous different things, his singing lies left of Tom Waits style, but he is far from being a reminder. His touch on music is magical and unique. Avant garde, german cabaret, easteuropean folk, gypsy music, zen, balkan, traditional or cosmopolitan dance forms, classical, romantism, jazz, blues, early 20th century, improvisation ...are a few only tags to get an idea about.This album is, i think, one of his most song orientated, while others explore more experimental forms.Although he is, generally, influenced by NWW, fortunately here keeps distances from this too much overestimated band. If you are to trust only one of my suggestions listen to this man. For more info and other ARANOS gems visit the "wehavenozen.blogspot.com". Peter Vastl, the last of the saltibanques.

small spaces (89,5mb)

FUXA very well organized (1996)

This US duo appeared at 90`s , at a post rock period very furious about reviving the analog synth sound. They use heavily moogs, organ and primitive electronic sound effects (unexplained transmissions as themshelves say). Their music brings in mind krautscapes, retro sci-fi, and a space floating ambience tranquil or mysterious, full of suspended minor elements and astro-dust.Their vision is quite subterranean,originated at 60`s psych... Summing up, a well organized study of old technology and minimal ideas materialized by simple sonar means.These skeletal, avoiding peeks orchestrations can easily become a soundtrack of your own alien scenario or equally leave you half hypnotized into the weightless fogs of nowhere.

link here @256Kb/s (96mb)

V.A. KNITTING ON THE ROOF (1998)

Avant-jazz-folk-klezmer-experimental revision of the classic "FIDDLER ON THE ROOF" musical , from first class "knitting" personalities and friends.Uncompromise , funny, grotesque, inventive, and completly diverse songs, create an extreme eclectisism by bringing close (and sometimes one into the other) the different and the old, the classic and the unexpected. A strong argument about free-minded creativity, an example of dream knitting...

tracklist
01.NEW ORLEANS KLEZMER ALLSTARS tradition
02.THE RESIDENTS matchmaker
03.MAGNETIC FIELDS if i were a richman
04.URI CAINE sabbath prayer
05.NAFTULE`S DREAM to life
06.DR. EUG.CHADBOURNE miracle of miracles
07.NEGATIVLAND tevye`s dream
08.JILL SOBULE sunrise, sunset
09.HASIDIC NEW WAVE wedding celebration
10.COME do you love me?
11.DAVID S. WARE far from the home i love
12.ELLIOTT SHARP chava ballet sequence
13.PARADOX TRIO anatevka

link (79mb)

PLASTIC PEOPLE OF THE UNIVERSE hovezi porazka (1984)

This avant prog , experimental czeck band that originated from late sixties, recorded the material of this album at early 80`s , at a period their members were under police surveillance because of their opposition to regime. PPOTU go beyond the usual for the genre combination of virtuosity, free imagination and complexity. Hovezi porazka is dense , tight music ,rooted in the blues-jazz-folk-r.i.o. territory. Magnificent eastern european flavoured horns sound rockier than guitars, while dark, inauspicious, or even explosive vocals express clearly the direct the hard reality the band faced seeking freedom in life and art as one and same thing. Artistry in the service of a revolutionary heart that needs no ideology to live riskly between activism and dreaming, between senses and thought.

LISTEN HERE (38 mb)

The holes of the world

Some years ago I played a pc game, named The Devil Inside. It was a classic third person shooter, survival horror game, where Dave, the main character, walks through a hounded place shooting the creatures of the night. In level two, if I recall, Dave reaches a very dirty (actually disgusting) toilet. There, after shooting down the inhabitant (a zombie), Dave walks inside to search for hidden items. And then, suddenly, before he was able to reach the toilet paper, the unexpected happed!! Dave fell into a hole. It was just if the world had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. I could still see him. Into the darkness, with some dim light coming from the hole above his head, he was still alive and capable of some moves, but that was it. At first I thought this was just a challenge in the game, and tried several ways to rescue my hero, with no success. At the end I realized that this was not a part of the game but rather an anomaly. Poor Dave was trapped out of his world, into nowhere, and there was no way he could get back inside. Later I found out that he was trapped into what is called a BSP hole.


In computer games a BSP hole (often connected with the Hall of mirrors effect) is a hole created into the boundaries of the game’s artificial “world”. These boundaries, and consequently the world, are made up of polygons fitting together. If, for some reason (a bug in programming or rendering let’s say), some polygons don’t fit well, a hole is appearing. If a character cross this point, a point that normally characters of the game are not supposed to go, he is actually stepping out of his world’s borders or, to be more precise, stepping into nowhere, with no possibility of returning.
In modern games, this phenomenon is usually prevented, and in the rare cases it actually happens, programmers provide a really simple solution to avoid stalling of the character;touching such a hole results to instant death.
I don’t know why I’ m telling these things. I’ m not a game developer, so my problem, after all, is not technical. I usually worry about the holes of the real world.

ΕΝ ΠΛΩ (EN PLO) fragmenta III, (1991)

Για τους εν πλω ένα απο τα πιο ιδιαίτερα ελληνικά undergroung rock σχήματα όλων των εποχών ...δεν χρειάζεται να πουμε εμείς πολλά.... Οι μη γνωρίζοντες, και οι λησμονούντες, ας ανατρέξουν στους σύνδεσμους που παραθέτουμε πιο κατω για ενδελεχέστερη ενημέρωση. Μετα απο ενα και μοναδικό, ομώνυμο LP (1989), χωρις προηγούμενο και επόμενο στην ντόπια σκηνη, και πριν ενδημήσουν στις κρύπτες του χρόνου, οι εν πλω κυκλοφόρησαν μέσω του fanzine "ΣΤΙΣ ΣΚΙΕΣ ΤΟΥ Β23" ενα 7ιντσο single που έμελε να αναχθεί σ`ενα απο τα πιο πολυπόθητα συλλεκτικά αντικείμενα των κατοπινών ετών. Οι εν πλω συνοψίζουν το ηλεκτρικό παρελθον, και την θρεμένη απ`το σπατάλημα νιότης  μυθολογία του άστεως, κάνοντας όμως και ένα αναπάντεχο βήμα πιο πέρα, όπου σμίγουν με την ποίηση, τη λαική κουλτούρα, το περιθώριο άλλων εποχών, τη φολκ παράδοση... Αυτό που κατά τη γνώμη μου δίνει στον ήχο τους ξεχωριστή ομορφιά και βαρύτητα καλλιτεχνική, είναι το ότι η συμπερίληψη των παραπάνω σε μια φόρμα ενιαίας εκφραστικότητας, δεν εμποδίζει τα στοιχεία που τη συνιστούν να διατηρούν εντός του συνόλου μια αυτόνομη εκπόρευση γοητευτική.

Το εξωφυλλο του τευχους του fanzine (φαν-ζειν) ΣΤΙΣ ΣΚΙΕΣ ΤΟΥ Β23 

http://www.ypokoultoura.gr/music/en_plw/in_rock-en_plw.html

http://www.ypokoultoura.gr/music/en_plw/en_plw.html

Very rare single, one of the most desirable seven inches of the greek underground. Released exclusively thru greek fanzine (see image above ).Riped from vinyl.

fragmenta... here (21mb)

KRAMER songs from the pink death (1998)

Kramer, musician (shockabilly,bongwater ...) ,top producer (low , galaxie500 etc...) and mainman behind important SHIMMY DISC label can be considered ,trully, a mentor of american underground scene for last decades.

"SONGS FROM THE PINK DEATH" followed his most acclaimed period (mostly with BONGWATER ), released at a time when the alt.underground audiences were already searching for some new ground into the post-pcych land, and finally remained obscured by "GUILT TRIP" his first solo ,ambitious 2cd work (a work in progress...), sharing the same more or less main feeling with it. Here you ll find , crafted by KRAMER`s unique, personal, raw, noisy, melodic, bitter, funny, surreal way, the whole gamut of contradicted feelings and complexities about "pink death". Although "SONGS FROM THE PINK DEATH" exits, supposedly, to sunny open roads and new hopeful starts, i couldn`t tell whether gives catharsis or flows into an even deeper adoration of despaired love.

Pink Death

SHOCKABILLY colosseum (1984)

Second of the 4 studio LP`s SHOCKABILLY released ,"COLOSSEUM " , will lead you straight to the world of peculiar chemical reactions taking place into a mind exposed repeatedly to the chimeric truth of genuine psychedelism. COLOSSEUM, although it carries lunatic doses of overthrowing memory , schizo-seriousness and disrespect, fits very naturally to the heart of most seductive art. Comic, disturbing, swampy, sheltering into past as if this past were yet to come SHOCKABILLY `s albums founded all the post psych curiosity and beauty that shimmy disc, kramer, Bongwater etc became the later years famous about. EUGENE CHADBURNE (guitar), DAVID LICHT (drums) and KRAMER (bass, keys,and alchemistic production) created a small cartoon-electric universe that still conducts.... (61,5mb)

Werner Herzog: The Wild Blue Yonder ( 2005)

“This is my story. Now, this is my story. I come from the outer reaches of Andromeda. Imagine planet Earth, the solar system, the milky way, your galaxy… I come from another galaxy, a blue one, way, way beyond your world. Where I come from is the wild blue yonder.”

The wild blue yonder, an aquatic planet in Andromeda is dead, and the alien narrator (Brad Dourif), one of his residents who fled to earth and salvation, tell us the chronicle of this death, his specie’s journey and failures, and finally the chronicles of human failures and our specie’s death.

This science fiction, pseudo-documentary film keeps in line with Herzog’s insistent point of view in aesthetic, ideological and historical aspects. The human being, trapped into its egoistic shell, is driven by ambition and desires which defy natural order; this is expressed into a society that either crushes the individual or, in the case of Yonder, flirts with self destruction. A heavy criticizer of modern civilization, Herzog insists in an anti-humanist viewpoint that finally turns out to be a cry for human reconciliation with nature.

The film uses original footage by the 1989 STS-34 Atlantis space shuttle mission and Henry Kaiser’s diving expedition in Antarctica, footage that Herzog’s filming ability manages to transform into an impressionistic vision; this, along with Ernst Reijseger’s excellent music score (and Mola Sylla’s striking vocals) creates an exceptional aesthetic result, fully aligned with Herzog’s previews works.

Wild Blue Yonder official page

Ernst Reijseger And Mola Sylla: In search of a hospitable place



UPDATE:11/7/08
The link (and the post containing it) for the album download has been removed after a request by the (representing the artists) company. Enjoy the rest of the blog!
begemot

MARC JEFFREY "Playtime" (US, 1990)

Back in 80`s , Marc Jeffrey was the leader (singer + guitarist) of New York`s BAND OF OUTSIDERS, a group that never became well known (even in the underground circuit ) and earned some middling only sympathy from ones explored the american post punk situation and the psych revivalism of that era . Band Of Outsiders disbanded before the turn of new decade, leaving behind them few LP`s / EP`s and a collaboration with CERTAIN GENERAL ( amazing 80`s NY post no-wave band). Afterwards Marc released "PLAYTIME", an old fashioned psych-folk-art-pop gem, superior than the previous works, but unfortunately, same fated with them.

Its excellent 60`s-influenced songsmithness places "PLAYTIME" near the most loving works of psych archetypes like LOVE , SPIRIT, etc. Nevertheless the inspiration and the whole artistic atmosphere leave no doubts about the originality of this work. As if predating the lo-fi attidute of 90's "PLAYTIME" hides its brilliance under a very modest sound profile... and it definitely worths discovering.

I riped it from my (Nate Starkman & Son Greece) vinyl so you prepare for some...hissing.
Playtime  (80mb)

Update summer 2013 :

After a long hiatus Marc Jeffrey and the Band Of Outsiders are back!!

They released the mini-album "Sound  Beach Quartet" in 2012 and a new album is coming out hopefully this summer.

Thanks Marc Jeffrey for updating info...

FOR AGAINST shelf life (1997)

Though FOR AGAINST got most of their acclaimed cult status at 80`s , later albums like "shelf life " have no less interest , not to say that their vision for beauty is here even more delicate than before. An excelent "less is more" release of the legendary independent project label.

Listen here ( 68mb) at 256Kb/s

NINO ROTA plein soleil (1961)

Listen to this classic soundtrack HERE ...