Pierre Henri and Spooky Tooth - Ceremony: An Electronic Mass

Yet another, possibly the weirdest entry in the list of Catholic-Mass-as-pop albums. This is a brainchild of the french composer Pierre Henri, the XXth century classical/avantgarde artist, known for his experimental electronic music and musique concrete works. He enlisted a british blues-rock band Spooky Tooth as studio musicians. The end product sounds kinda like Hawkwind with Stockhausen instead of Dik Mik manning the electronics. The resulting LP was marketed as a Spooky Tooth album.

I got it at the wonderful Closet of Curiosities blog, but it is also available at the Mutant Sounds and Zappadalata.
Also, a review.


Pierre Henri and Spooky Tooth - Ceremony: An Electronic Mass on 4shared
1. Confession
2. Have Mercy
3. Credo
4. Offering
5. Hosanna
6. Prayer

PS I added a tag mass

Silver Apples - Silver Apples + Contact

AMG says: Decades after their brief yet influential career first ground to a sudden and mysterious halt, the Silver Apples remain one of pop music's true enigmas: a surreal, almost unprecedented duo, their music explored interstellar drones and hums, pulsing rhythms and electronically-generated melodies years before similar ideas were adopted in the work of acolytes ranging from Suicide to Spacemen 3 to Laika. The Silver Apples formed in New York in 1967 and comprised percussionist Danny Taylor and lead vocalist Simeon, a bizarre figure who played an instrument also dubbed the Simeon, which (according to notes on the duo's self-titled 1968 debut LP) consisted of "nine audio oscillators and eighty-six manual manual controls...The lead and rhythm oscillators are played with the hands, elbows and knees and the bass oscillators are played with the feet." Although the utterly uncommercial record — an ingenious cacophony of beeps, buzzes and beats — sold poorly, the Silver Apples resurfaced a year later with their sophomore effort, Contact, another far-flung outing which fared no better than its predecessor. After the record's release, the duo seemingly vanished into thin air, perhaps returning to the alien world from whence they purportedly came.


Silver Apples - Silver Apples
AMG review
256kbps, 60mb on sharebee
1. Oscillations
2. Seagreen Serenades
3. Lovefingers
4. Program
5. Velvet Cave
6. Whirly-Bird
7. Dust
8. Dancing Gods
9. Misty Mountain


Silver Apples - Contact
AMG review
256kbps, 75mb on sharebee LINK REMOVED
1. You And I
2. Water
3. Ruby
4. Gypsy Love
5. You're Not Foolin' Me
6. I Have Known Love
7. A Pox On You
8. Confusion
9. Fantasies

Oskar Sala - My Fascinating Instrument

In 1930, Dr. Friedrich Trautwein invented the Trautonium, the only instrument in the world capable of producing subharmonics, which are the mirror opposite of harmonics, or 'ghost' note like playing a string on a violin only half held down. Oscar Sala, a young student of Trautwein's, pioneered the development of the instrument and made the Mixtur-Trautonium, an improved polyphonic instrument which was used in the soundtrack of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, as the instrument sounded more ominous than the sound of real birds. The Trautonium has advantages over a synthesizer giving freedom of intonation like a fretless string instrument to play microtones and continuous, unrestricted variations of pitch, tone and volume. The player makes contact with a wire stretched over a metal strip to create a circuit. It was a forerunner to the modular synthesizers of the 1960s. Nearly all knowledge of the performance and workings of the Trautonium has died with Oscar Sala in 2002, but the album My Fascinating Instrument, which is available today, is testament to Sala's musical genius. @

A lengthy article on the composer and the instrument, and a shorter one; по русски.


Oskar Sala - My Fascinating Instrument
REUP:320kbps, 143mb on mediafire
1. Fantasy In Three Parts For Mixturtrautonium Solo
- Demonstration
- Skala Nuova
- Farbmelodie
2. "Speech Of The Dead Christ From The Universe Saying There Is No God"
3. Largo
4. Fanfare
5. Impression Electronique
6. Electronic Dance Suite For Mixturtrautonium Solo And Mixturorchestra (Tape) in five parts
- Concertando rubato
- Espressivo
- Giocoso
- Strepitoso
- Furioso

Burunduk Quartet - Stuffed Horse

Most excellent Russan lounge electronica. Highly recommended! One of the rare albums I don't get tired of; I first heard it eight years ago and I still keep it in my player. If you liked Jaga Jazzist, try this one out.


Burunduk Quartet - Stuffed Horse
67 mb on zippyshare or uloz.to
1. Coffee Seller
2. Liliana Plachet (Liliana is crying)
3. Barmenov Nikogda Ne Ubivaut (The bartender never gets killed)
4. Sleeping Plane
5. Gaucho Bojatsja Goroda (Gaucho are afraid of the city)
6. Mamilor Podisir
7. Pierre I Richard
8. Bizon Bizon
9. Bootscream
10. Persi Hit
11. Lorry
12. Pin-Up Resus
13. Farshirovannaja Loshad (Stuffed horse)
14. Boby

Aavikko - Derek! + The Desert EP

Another Aavikko share, here's the first one. An excellent Finnish trio. They've been called "electro-surf" - a lo-fi synth sound with a surf music sensiblity: short, punchy, dirty instrumentals with a lot of hooks.
This disc combines two releases: #14 through 21 is their first recording, an EP titled Aavikko (which is finnish for Desert). It was released on a russian label and therefore the title itself is in russian (Пустыня), and so are the song titles.
#1 through 13 is their first full-length, Derek! I like Derek! a lot better. I don't know whether it's the producer, the equipment or what, but the EP sounds too harsh and abrasive for my taste. Derek!, on the other hand, has a near perfect balance between the melodic songs and the noisy, grimy arrangements.


Aavikko - Derek! + The Desert EP
200VBR, 73 mb
megaupload
mediafire
1. El Cebo
2. Galaktus
3. Baltic Sea
4. Derek
5. Cloun
6. Panama
7. Bolek Bolek
8. Manolito's Day off
9. Kazimbalis
10. Pink Service
11. Elsku Mau Mau
12. $3000
13. Cipetown
14. Vniz Po Volge (Down the Volga River)
15. Sredi Samoedov (Among the Eskimos)
16. Luga Krakova (Krakov's Fields)
17. Moroz V 5 Gradusov (-5 degrees C)
18. Pustynya (The Desert)
19. Podruga (Girlfriend)
20. Transsibirskaya Zheleznaya Doroga (Trans-siberian Railway)
21. Dux Oblomova (Oblomov's Spirit)

Links

Earlier, I shared OHM: Early Gurus of Electronic Music; now it's shared at themoreyouthinkaboutit.blogspot.com - on mediafire, and it's mp3 instead of m4a.

Also, here's more recent stuff I am listening to:


Earthless - Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky
Reviews: AMG, 1, 2, 3, 4.
megaupload or rapidshare pt. 1 and pt. 2
Psychedelic/stoner metal, 40 minutes of non-stop riffage.


I've been looking for Baden Powell's Os Afro-Sambas for a long time, and now it's available at somdoroque.blogspot.com. The description is in portugese, so here is an article about this disc. In brief, this cycle of songs was insprired by the Afro-Brazilian spiritual tradition Candomblé and the music of samba; it was written during a three-month long drinking binge with the famous poet Vinícius de Moraes (who wrote the lyrics). The album was rerecorded in 1995, but the link is to the original one.


A great afro-caribbean funk band, Cymande, at the consistently excellent Lost In Tyme.


And the best find of them all, Hazmat Modine - Bahamut. The band is driven by a pair harmonicas, backed by tuba, drums, guitars, and trumpet, with the addition of special guests playing exotic instruments such as the claviola, the cimbalom or the Chinese mouth-organ, the bass sax and the Sarusaphone. @ This is some really crazy far-out genre-crossing stuff.

Plone - For Beginner Piano + Jaga Jazzist - A Living Room Hush

Two electronica albums of a sublime beauty. If you read this blog, you know that "melodic" is an adjective I use a lot to describe the music I like.

Plone is a toy-sounding music, sharing the sensibility with the 8-bit scene - they use bleeping, tinkling, buzzing sounds reminiscent of the 80s videogames as building blocks to construct delicate and beautiful pop songs.

Plone - For Beginner Piano (Warp)
Reviews: one, two
192 kbps, 55 mb
mediafire
megaupload
1 On My Bus (4:27)
2 Top & Low Rent (3:50)
3 Plock (3:57)
4 Marbles (3:50)
5 Busy Working (3:37)
6 The Greek Alphabet (3:47)
7 Press A Key (4:04)
8 Bibi Plone (2:53)
9 Be Rude To Your School (3:28)
10 Summer Plays Out (5:32)

The spirit of jazz does not live in the undead body that bears the name jazz nowadays, it is incarnated in a new form, and Jaga Jazzist is the one. A perfect fusion of electronica, live instruments and the post-rock atmospheric production. A modern Gil Evans would do something like this.

Jaga Jazzist - A Living Room Hush (Ninja Tune)
Reviews: one, two
192 kbps, 68 mb
megaupload
mediafire
1. Animal Chin
2. Going Down
3. Press Play
4. Airborne
5. Real Racecars Have Doors
6. Low Battery
7. Midget
8. Made For Radio
9. Lithuania
10. Cinematic

Electric Gypsyland 2

Like its predecessor, Electric Gypsyland 2 is a collection of reinterpretations of recordings by several modern Balkan bands — some of the new versions are relatively straightforward remixes, while others are much more dramatic and imaginative reworkings of the source material. Unlike the first volume in this series, however, this one also includes a bonus disc that offers original, untouched versions of songs by those same bands (though they're not always the same tracks as the ones remixed on the first disc). The format and presentation of this collection may be a bit unusual and even disconcerting, but that's probably as it should be — the same is true of the music itself, which is a wild fusion of musical styles even in its original form and is even more kaleidoscopically varied in the remixes. Check out the wild, almost klezmer-sounding clarinet on Koçani Orkestar's "Mi Bori San Korani," and the glitchy techno underpinnings that Smadji installs beneath it, or the dubwise production effects that DJ ClicK applies to Mahala Raï Banda's already faintly reggae-inflected "Romano Dance." But the album's highlight is "Red Bula," a brilliant piece of party-ready horn-based Gypsy dance funk given an even wilder setting by Balkan Beat Box. Contributions by Cibelle and Oi Va Voi are equally exciting. Highly recommended. - AMG review
More reviews: one, two


CD1 on megaupload or mediafire
CD2 on mediafire or megaupload


Disc 1
1. Homecoming — Tunng vs. Taraf de Haidouks
2. Alone At My Wedding — Buscemi vs. Kocani Orkestar
3. Oi Bori Sujie — Animal Collective vs. Kocani Orkestar
4. Red Bula- Balkan Beat Box vs. Mahala Rai Banda
5. Romano Dance — DJ Click vs. Mahala Rai Banda
6. Mi Bori San Korani — Smadj vs. Kocani Orkestar
7. Duba Duba Si Hora — Shantel vs. Taraf de Haidouks
8. A Rom And A Home — Oi Va Voi vs. Taraf de Haidouks
9. Maxutu — Cibelle vs. Kocani Orkestar
10. The Man Who Drinks- Forty Thieves Orkestar vs. Mahala Rai Banda
11. Moreau D’Amour — Nouvelle Vague vs. Mahala Rai Banda
12. Neacsu In Africa — ShrineSynchroSystem vs. Taraf de Haidouks
13. Immigrant Radio/Soldier Tufaiev Abroad — Yuriy Gurzhy/Russendisko & Friends vs. Zelwer
14. Go East — Gaetano Fabri vs. Taraf de Haidouks
15. Ismail Oro — 43 Skidoo feat. Susgeela Raman vs. Kocani Orkestar
16. Spoitoresa Revisited (Got The Parts Mix) — Russ & Roc vs. Mahala Rai Banda

Disc 2
1. Cudna Zena - Kocani Orkestar
2. Siki, Siki Baba - Kocani Orkestar
3. L'Orient Est Rouge - Kocani Orkestar
4. Duba, Duba Si Hora - Taraf De Haidouks
5. Terno Chelipe - Taraf De Haidouks
6. Cind Eram La '48 - Taraf De Haidouks
7. A La Turk - Taraf De Haidouks
8. Spoitoresa - Mahala Rai Banda
9. Lest Sexy - Mahala Rai Banda
10. Romano Dance - Mahala Rai Banda
11. The Fiancee's Dream - Zelwer
12. Soldier Tufaiev Gets Married - Zelwer

Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X

A perfect marriage of indie rock and electronica on a set of great pop songs. One of the very, very few records from the mainstream radio that I can relate to.


Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X
192 kbps, 72 mb
REUP: megaupload
1. Low Place Like Home
2. Tesko Suicide
3. 6 Underground
4. Becoming X
5. Spin Spin Sugar
6. Post-Modern Sleaze
7. Waterbaby
8. Roll On
9. Wasted Early Sunday Morning
10. Walking Zero
11. How Do
12. 6 Underground (Nellee Hooper Edit)

Shanghai Lounge Divas Vol. 1

In 2003 the global music company EMI was clearing out an old warehouse in Mumbai, India in preparation for its demolition. EMI had been there since the 1920s when it manufactured and distributed records under the Pathe label. In the warehouse, workmen unearthed a trunk with Chinese writing on it and inside were the mother shells of about 800 songs from the thirties and forties. These were the reels used to press the stamper that produced the old vinyl 78s [...] Music as unique as the city in its golden era, a mixture of Eastern and Western influences, blues, jazz, traditional Chinese opera and folk music. Read more


Shanghai Lounge Divas, CD1 - The Remixes
320kbps, 150 mb
zippyshare
1. Plum Blossom – Li Xiang-lan
2. Waiting 4 U – Bai Kwong
3. If Only… - Li Xiang-lan
4. Stop Singing – Chow Hsuan
5. The Pretender – Bai Kwong
6. All the Stars in the Sky – Chang Loo
7. This Love is Not for Me – Yao Lee
8. Listen Up – Bai Hong
9. Autumn Evening – Bai Kwong
10. The Wandering Songstress – Chow Hsuan
11. The Plough Song – Chang Loo
12. Ye Shanghai – Chow Hsuan

Shanghai Lounge Divas, CD2 - The Originals
320 kbps, 160 mb
depositfiles
1. Plum Blossom – Li Xiang-lan
2. Waiting 4 U – Bai Kwong
3. If Only… - Li Xiang-lan
4. Stop Singing - Chow Hsuan
5. The Pretender – Bai Kwong
6. All the Stars in the Sky – Chang Loo
7. This Love is Not for Me – Yao Lee
8. Listen Up – Bai Hong
9. Autumn Evening – Bai Kwong
10. The Wandering Songstress – Chow Hsuan
11. The Plough Song – Chang Loo
12. Ye Shanghai 2003 – Chow Hsuan
13. Longing for You – Gong Chio-xia
14. Lingering Love – Man Ping
15. Shangri-La – OuYoung Fei-ying
16. Shanghai Miss – Zhang Yi-wen
17. Love that’s Gone – Gu Ying
18. Song of the Fisherman – Wang Ren-mei
19. Harmonious Couple - Lang Yu-xiu
20. Hundred Birds – Li Li-hua/Yan Hua
21. Fallen Petals – Lu Min
22. Heavenly Spring Dream – Lu Ming
23. The Blossom Youth - Chow Hsuan
24. The Night Is Too Beautiful To Last – Pei Ni

Aavikko - Back From The Futer

Not sure what it is about Scandinavia, but they got a disproportionate number of great bands. Maybe they have nothing better to do during those six-month-long polar nights but sit around and jam. BTW, I am not talking about the ridiculous church-burning bandmember-killing who's-the-truest-satanist-competing brainless black metal hairy fucks from Burzum or whatever, I am talking real music. My favorite band of 2006, Kaiser's Orchestra, are Norwegians. But in the little Finland, there are funkateers the Soul Investigators (I wrote of them earlier), there are surfers Laika and the Cosmonauts, the folk-punkers Elakelaiset, there are the genre-defying Kimmo Pohjonen, Alamaailman Vasarat, Apocalyptica, and the completely undescribable Aavikko.

Aavikko is one of those bands made to excercise the vocabulary of the music critics: they've been called any conceivable combination of labels and then some. "Electro-surf", "casio exotica", "hoarse garage lounge", "retro-futurist synth rock", "cinematic Finnish casiocore", "the casio madness is propelled with pseudo disco syncopations and hyper-active breakbeats, while second hand synths weave surprisingly lush noir soundscapes, equal parts moody cocktaily jazz, propulsive spy thriller soundtrack muzak, spastic mechanical sounding krautrock and pretty much every musical stop in between." The band itself talked about their first release as ranging from "surf-house to maniacal monkey-jazz, from delicate faux-lounge moments to grating avantgarde screech, from ethnic rhythms to quasi-disco boogie blast."

I know this is a lot of nonsense and not enough information, so here's my pedestrian explanation of what they are like: a live drummer and two keyboardists armed with vintage cheap synths play a very intense melodic electronic rock with a dirty lo-fi sound. Grab it, it's good!


megaupload
200VBR, 58 mb
1. Back From The Futer
2. Rosinante
3. Homo Futurus
4. Una Lira Soluzione
5. Erotica
6. Wot Wot NeoZulu
7. Futer City
8. P-Piste
9. Salamapallo
10. Capitano Argento
11. Diamond Pyramid

Retro-electronica from 1968

Fred Weinberg - The Weinberg Method Of Non-Synthetic Electronic Rock, 1968
REUP 2/13/2014: zippyshare
90mb, 320kbps

...an album simultaneously exploiting the possibilities of electronic-scientific music and producing the visceral excess of late-60’s psychedelia... worthy predecessors to Faust and the Yellow Magic Orchestra... the pre-Kraftwerk outfit The Organisation or Raymond Scott.

Liner notes:
The Weinberg Method of Non-Synthetic Electronic Rock (or the Electronic Rock Method of Non-Synthetic Weinberg) is a revolution in sound (or sound in revolution). To be more precise, the W.M.N.S.E.R., as it is affectionately known, is a way of taking the sounds of common musical instruments (twang), sounds of every day life (beep-beep), sounds of the human body (hic-cup) and altering them electronically to create a totally new concept of recording. In the hands of Mr. Weinberg, the human heart-beat becomes a bass drum, an ambulance siren becomes a slide trombone and the sound of a secretary filing her nails becomes a 24 piece string section. Undoubtedly, Fred Weinberg is the first man in history to orchestrate an alka-seltzer fizzing, a computer-card computing and a toilet flushing. When Mr. Weinberg leads his orchestra, the whole world is in the pit. One of his earliest experiments in sound was the time he recorded an ant walking on sand. Unfortunately, the experiment was cut-short by a myopic ice-cream vendor. Of course, this is not to say that Fred Weinberg was the first man ever to discover that the sounds of every day life can be more harmonious than the sounds of traditional music. For instance, George Bernhard Shaw once said, 'Nothing soothes me more, after a long and maddening day of pianoforte recitals, than to sit and have my teeth drilled.' (Shaw? Didn't he used to be the lead singer with the Del-Vikings?) To sum up, then, The Electronic Weinberg Rock of Non-Synthetic Method is simply an assortment of natural sounds that are slowed-down, speeded-up, turned upside-down and inside-out. Sound like sound never sounded before.

1. 1958 Revisited
2. A Childs Life
3. A Theme For Julie
4. Animosity
5. Big Fat Woman
6. Cowboy Gregg
7. Heavy Breathing
8. Money Talks
9. Keen Machine
10. Muck De Foog
11. Ode To Billy Joe
12. Sanctuary
13. Gumball
14. Supersonic
15. Aum Mau Mau
16. Ah,Ha!
17. El Condor Pasa
18. Speedo


From http://rangeraver-lounge.blogspot.com/:


Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman, 1968
192 kbps, 63 mb
on 4shared
1. Topless Dancers Of Corfu
2. The Legend Of Johnny Pot
3. The Moog & Me
4. Tap Dance In The Memory Banks
5. Four Duets In Odd Meter
6. The Minotaur
7. Total Bells & Tony (Mottola)
8. Improvisation In Fourths
9. Evening Thoughts
10. Give It Up Or Turn It Loose
11. Kolumbo
12. Time Is Tight

Two retro-electronica comps

Best of Moog: Electronic Pop Hits from the 60's and 70's
REUP: depositfiles
120mb

1. Popcorn - Hot Butter
2. The Savers - Perrey-Kingsley
3. E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey
4. The Look Of Love - Richard Hayman
5. Midnight Cowboy - Martin Denny
6. One Note Samba/Spanish Flea - Perrey-Kingsley
7. Foggy Mountain Breakdown - Gil Trythall
8. Bond St - Enoch Light And The Light Brigade
9. Winchester Cathedral - Perrey-Kingsley
10. I Apologize Mr. Rossini - Armando Trovaidli
11. Baroque Hoedown - Perrey-Kingsley
12. Jeepster - Electrik Cokernut
13. Kinky Peanuts - Armando Trovaioli
14. Back Off Boogaloo - Elektrik Cokernut
15. Shank - First Moog Quartet
16. Moog Power - Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra
17. Give It Up Or Turn It Loose - Dick Hyman
18. Hey Hey - First Moog Quartet
19. E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey (Fatboy Slim remix)



Electronic Toys: A Retrospective of 70's Synthesizer Music
REUP: mediafire
38mb, ~128kbps, these are .m4a not .mp3!

01 Cecil Canterburn - Catching Game (2:01)
02 Rex Brown Company - Round Up (0:47)
03 David Vorhaus - The Diy Machine (a) (1:05)
04 Dave Richmond - Movin' Along (1:59)
05 Ron Geesin - Ambling Antics (2:17)
06 Claude Larson - Highway E1 (3:49)
07 Gerhard Trede - Technischer Bewegungsablauf (1:28)
08 Eric Peters - Heystone Capers 2 (1:15)
09 Ted Atking - Childrens Carnival (2:40)
10 David Vorhaus - Mainframe Blues (2:51)
11 Gerhard Trede - Gefahrenzone 1 (3:43)
12 Roland Kovac - Bits (2:19)
13 David Vorhaus - Three O (a) (1:06)
14 Eric Peters - Mechanical Movement (2:36)
15 The Heinz Funk Electronic Combo - Menuett (1:26)
16 Brian Bennett - Ergon (1:35)
17 Steve Gray - The Sausage Machine (1:08)
18 Mladen Franko - Zoolife (3:05)
19 Ron Geesin - Jolly Pranks (2:14)