Wanted to go with something from the 60's for my Spanish entry, dug this up. Slightly familiar with Machado, so I figured it'd be interesting at the least. Decent find, just clocking over 32 min, singer/songwriter stuff with a full backed band at times and a dope horn section, some lovely flute/string orchestration on some tracks too. Almost early Scott Walker-esque, but with perhaps some Cohen mixed in. Some theatrical tracks, some ballads. Slight mishmush, but it works.
CAUSE IT'S A SWEDISH BANGER PER TRACK. Sweden's been an obvious music powerhouse for decade now, mainly with dance/electronic/dance production, but man when something good comes out of Sweden, it's damn good.
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Beautiful piano/ambient album from this year, fantastic cinematic stuff. Clean, sharp, dreamy, sophisticated, plenty of pleasant textures throughout. Great background music. Will def be in my top 100 of the year.
Funk/afrofunk/chill African riverside music, even some undertones of reggae and dub. Only 4 tracks unfortunately, and many overstay their welcome, but they're still pretty good. Fantastic instrumentation across the board. Just have to be in the right mood.
Long overdue for a relisten, Alina Orlova is ace dream pop. Light, ambient, fantastic string section and incredible production. Think Adele or Florence & The Machine, but a bit less pop. Really great record I wish more people knew about.
Dancehall/mc/funk/psych borderline rap at times. All of the tracks could have been divided down into 3 or 4 more songs, don't think they were too picky about where the album was cut, it was def meant to be listened to all at once. Bout as good as it gets though.
Decent reggae album from the minuscule island of Anguila. As good as anything to come out of Jamaica, mellow with a titch of melancholy. Bankie Banx is still active in Anguila, and apparently quite popular down there. Just a quick reminder that locals live there.
My brother used to own a military museum. I put together a playlist for his Vietnam room which featured a lot of American rock from the 60's and 70's, but I also researched some Vietnamese artists.
Khanh Ly was one of the first internationally known artists from Vietnam, she gained fame in the late 60's and early 70's, the worst part of the Vietnam war.
After the war, she was displaced like many other Southern Vietnamese people despite her status as one of the most famous performers in the country, and she moved to America in 1975. The music for her songs was written by a composer named, Trinh Cong Son.
I can't remember the exact translation of this song and its lyrics, but I remember they were gruesome depictions of things witnessed during the war.
Ah, cool cool cool. Will check that out in a sec. Definitely an interesting period to hear recordings from. There seem to be some massive comps from her discography online, but I'll try to dig up an album by her. Digging up eastern Asian records has proven quite interesting so far, the earlier the better.
Super super tropical sounding stuff from this tiny island off the coast of Gabon. Like Africa highlife meets Hawaiian dance. Fun, light, summery, casual as can be. This band changes names in a very P. Diddy-esque fashion, but I believe they’re still kicking it. This album was recently reissued under just the title ’Carambola’.
Dug around Bandcamp for this one. Comp from Amara Toure, from what I can tell they're the only 10 songs he ever recorded. Decent rec, it's all pretty solid stuff. The blerb from BC sums it up pretty well.
The enigmatic Amara Touré from Guinée Conakry finally getting a well deserved compilation showcasing all of the 10 songs ever released between 1973 and 1980. Cuban influenced music of a different kind featuring amazing spaced-out guitar works!!
"Latin music, is it really foreign to us Africans? I don't think so. Listen to the drums, to the rhythm. It all seems very close to us - it feels like it’s our own culture”, declared enigmatic singer Amara Touré.
It is the late 50s, and Senegal is going crazy to the groove of Son Montuno and Patchanga. Brought to West Africa by Cuban sailors in the early 40s, these styles were immediately adopted by a flourishing music scene that did not hesitate to embrace the Caribbean sound, mixed it with their own Folklore, and, in the process, created something new. Through the unique cultural fusion of West African and Caribbean influences, Latin music took on a new and unique sound - the format was reinvented...
It goes on for a couple more paragraphs, def worth a read (preferably while listening to the album). Good insight into the history of the area and the music that shaped it.
Second listen, and this album's definitely grown on me. Borderline sounds like early Bon Iver or Mount Eerie, but with much longer takes and less structure. Some tracks are a titch long at time, but it works out as a whole. Recommend playing loud, get into the atmosphere of it all.
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Nigeria, since the late 60's, has been a serious powerhouse for music. Folk, fuji, highlife, afrobeat, waka, reggae, disco, modern hip-hop, and tribal chants dating back centuries, it's been a musically rich country. Poetic, percussion heavy, horn heavy, wide and complex instrumental variation, lyrics often depicting horrors and suffering in what sounds like 'fun' music, there's been an amazing output from this country, perhaps more than any other in Africa. You can dig in Nigerian record bins for hours and always find something worth listening to. Here are some recent and old favourites.
This album unquestionably took me by surprise, it's fantastic. Diving into it, the only track I knew was Hot Black N Sweet, but my god are there some gems on here. The title track is phenomenal, Dance All Over Me is bangin, and Rat Race City might as well be a classic. Considering I thought this would be an iffy disco album fro the early 80's, I was pleasantly surprised. More on the funk/rock side of things, it's a super solid record and a new fav.
I don't shoot for compilations, but my god. One of the best afrofunk and disco artists without question, and an obvious staple of Nigerian music. Possibly his easiest album to find, it just makes sense diving in. Body And Soul, Atomic Bomb, Love Is Blind, Fantastic Man, and When The Going Is Smooth And Good are all so good. There's a 13-track version of this (digital or vinyl) that I highly recommend. The tracks are as lengthy as a post-rock album, but they somehow still never overstay their welcome. I think the album borders 3 hours, but just... like... do it. If you aren't up to the entire thing at once, try to find a copy of his '78 album Atomic Bomb and give that a spin.
A fantastic synth-based highlife record, psychedelic, almost prog-ish at times, but completely in control of what it wants to be. And dem basslines. Dem basslines. Original copies of this album go somewhere in the $500 mark, never reissued, but you can find a couple free download somewhere online. Great gateway into the genre for those more rock-centric.
And it's pretty hard to talk about Nigerian music (or even Nigeria) without bringing up Fela Kuti. I've recently realized I've heard more albums by Fela Kuti than any other artist (around 25-ish, albeit 90% of them are less that 30 minutes long and only 2 tracks, many playing out as a-side b-side singles), and I don't think any of them are a miss. Zombie, Expensive Shit, Confusion, Gentleman, Ikoyi Blindness, Shakara, Roforofo Fight and Live! w/ Ginger Bake among his best, I've chosen my new favourite, Sorrow Tears & Blood. Out of the numerous albums Fela released in '77, I think he nailed it with this one. Explosive, flashy, poetic, heartfelt and heartbreaking, these two tracks encompass what Fela Kuti is all about. The title track obviously being the main course, Colonial Mentality is nearly as good. Only complaint is that it's far too short. Could only imagine what it'd be like live.
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Mexico’s had a pretty good output the past 4-5 years with this new wave of folk/pop artists coming out of there (Natalia Lafourcade, Carranza, Carla Morrison, Hello Seahorse, Juan Cirerol) it’s been cool. Cinema’s been ever cooler. Here’s Lafourcade’s latest, a solid release, just as good as Hasta La Raiz, and a 2017 album not to be missed. Expect Mexico to be a heavy hitting country during the 2020’s, expecting dig things out of there in the oncoming years.
bum bum bum BUM bum BUM bum BUM bum …. BUM, and then the rest of the album. Fun, light, a treat. Some really brilliant arrangements and fantastic backing vocals. Apparently, somewhere in here, the lyrics give instructions on how to use and disassemble stolen government rifles. Village music.
Classic calypso. Alive and active since the late 40’s, Mighty Sparrow’s somewhat of a legend. The guy’s got somewhere around 50 albums i think, so I threw a dart at the board. Almost comedic lyrics with a Caribbean horn/percussion based backing. Some bizarre deliveries that don’t always work out, but it’s still a decent listen because of the stellar instrumentation.
Speaking of Trinidad, here’s Hazel Scott (mostly based New York and Paris… but nobody seems to stay anywhere). She was famous for her television show, but man did she know how to throw together some songs. A must listen jazz artist if you haven’t given her a shot, famous for often playing two pianos at the same time.
Chavela Vargas (a half-cheat because she was based in Mexico, but I was struggling with this one). Regardless of where it’s from, a great album that I’m glad I gave a chance. Only guitar and vocals, and it’s all your need. A fav of Pedro Almodovar.
My pick from Ecuador is a recent EP by French-born artist Nicola Cruz. Dug it up on Bandcamp. Really solid couple of downtempo dance tracks, sampling (I think) tribal instruments into something fairly unique and fresh. Woven within very clean and confident production, each track has a slightly different focus. A mixture of old and new, creating something quite sharp.
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