Orchestre Jamal | Mazhariphone Cassette (FLAC reup)

Thrilled to have re-ripped this amazing cassette at true speed in FLAC. Details below. Thanks to Tim at Moroccan Tape Stash for transliterations and details.

Grab it here.

Original post:

Confession: I went *back* to Nassem Halal Meat and Mediterranean Grocery here in Astoria, and, after a long conversation with Houssain, found another 40 grime-encrusted cassettes hidden in Nassem's nooks and crannies. Well, technically 38, as two of them were duplicates of a Zehouani tape I'd already picked up, but which was too old and worn to play. These cassettes come from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. As you've already suspected: Today's offering is from that last haul.

Thanks to the supercollector known as Mehdi J Blige, we know this is by Orchestra Djamal (or Jamal). Thanks to the J-card, we know the publisher is Mazhariphone. Thanks to our ears, we believe this might be the single most psychedelic cassette we've ever heard from al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyah. 

It's possible that this is the same Orchestra Jamal as in this video:

The sound is vaguely similar and the lead vocal is in the same youthful ballpark as on the tape. Speaking of which, let's talk about the tape in depth.

Side 1 kicks off with a plaintive, haunting string solo, aching and bending upward, until it opens a window for the lead male's voice, and a guitar that lays down a soft-strummed, spider-web thin scaffolding reminiscent of Omar Korshid at his most subtle. The kid's voice, as you'd gather from the cover above, is youthful, almost feminine. He starts off reciting and, as the track develops, begins to sing. At which point, any concern I had that this might be some kind of novelty or vanity project evaporates. The kid has soul. Deep, lived soul.

Just shy of the two-minute mark, the percussion and some sort of barely perceptible keyboard kick in. The drums -- which are nearly isolated in the mid-to-left-hand channel -- sound like a Moroccan Jaki Liebezeit is taking them out for a test drive. I have never, never-ever, heard a kit being played like this on a Moroccan recording. (If we're lucky, Tim might let us know whether they strike his more acutely trained ears as unusual.) The guitar lopes along, breaking out into occasional fuzz-toned fills.

The second track is where things start to get mind-melty. I don't know the specific instrument that opens the track, but it's some form of keyboard or synthesizer, and very trippy. The strings and Jaki Liebezeit kit kick in, followed by a sudden trill of mechanized ululation that swooshes across the sonic landscape. The kid and an adult male chorus trade phrases. 

This is not psychedelic in the normative sense. The architecture feels rooted squarely in Moroccan chaabi; it's in the fills and trills where things get freaky. 

And it's on Side 2 that the psychedelia gets turned up, especially the second and final track. I'm not going to attempt to describe it, other than to note that the synthesizer and guitar do things in this 11+ minute scorcher -- and we're still *technically* talking fills -- that make my head spin. 

And perhaps, dear reader, your head as well?

Link to the cassette rip in comments. 

Barış Manço ‎| Ben Bilirim (1990) (FLAC)

 

I found this compilation cassette, published by Yavuz Asöcal in 1990, in a dusty old record and audio parts store in the Kadıköy neighborhood of İstanbul -- a fitting place to pick up a keepsake by one of Turkey's most beloved rockers, given that my primary goal for the day was to visit his old house (now a museum) in the same neighborhood. 

The cassette highlights Manço's 1970s and 80s psychedelic-tinged work, from the scorching Gönül Dağı, to twisted B-sides like Estergon Kalesi, to the disco-era curiosity Fransızca, which closes out Side 2.

I inadvertently picked up a CD of this very same album, but upon listening, the cassette appears to have just slightly superior sonic quality. Which is not to say that it's ideal. The title track that leads off Side 1 is a bit rough-sounding.

But it's listenable. More importantly, it includes some of the greatest rock music ever captured on tape.

Get it here.

LET IT FLOW | 3 HRS of PSYCH + GARAGE

Listen to the show in the archives now!

On Wednesday, December 10, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio brought you three hours of mind-blowing, guitar-driven, sex, drugs & revolution-soaked psychedelic and garage rock from Belgium, Chile and Korea, to the former Yugoslavia and Zambia.

LET IT FLOW | 60s-70s Psych + Garage

This coming Wednesday, December 10, from 7-10 PM ET, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio brings you three hours of mind-blowing, guitar-driven, sex, drugs & revolution-soaked psychedelic & garage rock from Belgium, Chile and Korea, to the former Yugoslavia and Zambia.

Bookmark the page and join us Wednesday night!

The Olympians | The 45s 1966-1971

Reupped by reader request, here.

[Originaly written and posted November 1, 2012.] So, contrary to my rather cavalier pre-Sandy post last Sunday, here I am about to talk about the storm. Not to reiterate on the enormous damage it has caused up and down the east coast, but to turn your attention to the magazine I've been writing for since this summer, Open City. A number of writers associated with that online journal were asked yesterday to report on the storm's impact on New York's immigrant cultures by editor Kai Ma, who is a personal hero of mine for having started a magazine that focuses on immigrant culture in New York City in the first place. 

Now Kai is assembling and editing these reports from around the New York City area on the special impact the storm has had on these immigrants who, frankly, make this city (as well as this humble music blog) what it is. The first report, from Sukjong Hong, just went up today; you can read it here. 

My neighborhood, Astoria, didn't fare as poorly as others, though there is at least one tree downed on every other block. (Some 10,000 trees reportedly toppled in Queens alone.) We were lucky. Very, very lucky.

Today, while one of my co-workers relocated to Brooklyn with her family from their powerless, waterless apartment on the easternmost edge of Manhattan's Chinatown, I had the relative luxury of wandering around Astoria, surveying pockets of damage here and there, and marveling at the number of businesses--pretty much all of them--that have reopened in Sandy's wake. (Truth be told, most reopened yesterday.) Including one of my go-to immigrant-run stores: GMV, or Greek Music & Video Inc. (25-50 31st Street, Astoria, NY 11102).

As you'll remember, back in February I found this fabulous CD by surf-garage-psych band The Olympians at GMV; today, I returned to the same spot in the stacks and discovered the subject of today's post: A collection assembled in 1996 of the band's earliest 45 records.

The CD includes original songs and covers in both English and Greek (including a Greek version of the Kinks' "Lola") spanning the first five years of the band's existence. It's a rock-solid, life-affirming collection that I'm going to guess many of you, regular visitors and those who may have stepped in to the Bodega for the first time today, will enjoy.

And for everyone whose lives were affected by this truly unprecedented storm, our thoughts are with you ...

Niemen | Sukces (1968)

You are listening to first track of upsettingly groovy Polish psych album from late sixties

You are grabbing whole thingy here.

Not to make excuses, but I was in the middle of a longish post about this nothing-short-of-thrilling CD I discovered earlier today at a Polish media store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn  (Music Planet, 649 Manhattan Ave), when I hit a button or series of buttons that erased everything but the last two letters of the word "and." 

I can't rewrite it. I just can't. I'm exhausted. I have too many things going on right now. But neither can I wait to share this sublime gem with you for another moment.

Did you see the cover of this album? That's not a bullshit irony retro cover, dear reader. Oh, no. It's the original 1968 cover of Czeslaw Niemen's second album, Sukces (Success). Does the music live up to it? Oh, yes. Niemen (born Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki in 1939 in what is now Belarus ) was one of Poland's most important rock stars and his voice, the arrangements, everything sounds like some filthier--or perhaps merely moister--chain-smoking East European reprobate version of James Brown. 

Hoo-wah!

Nagat | Eyoun El Qalb

Grab it here.

I have wanted to post this -- one of my favorite Arabic records of all time -- for years, but I was convinced I had lost the disc. The jewel case, which I fortunately held onto, was empty and it was not until last weekend while doing a massive spring cleaning that I found it, slipped in between a couple of other CDs.

I first found this album, a good decade + change ago, in cassette tape form, in one of the half-dozen Arabic music stores I used to frequent in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I was still on the fence about digital media, continuing to buy mostly Arabic, Turkish and South Asian music on cassette (and Bolly- and Lollywood films on VHS) well past 9/11.

Speaking of which, right before 9/11 -- and I swear on all that is holy that I am not making this up -- I remember seeing, in South Asian media stores on Coney Island Avenue, references to "Terrorist Rap," which I assumed might be the bhangra equivalent of "Gangsta Rap." They disappeared shortly after the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, although it was around that time that I found a copy of what became one of my most treasured cassettes: DJ Aps's Got the World in Fear. 

I just assumed that the album was a response to 9/11, and quite possibly an example of this "terrorist rap" I saw here and there, though I'm guessing this is a (fortunate or unfortunate) coincidence. According to this page (where you can also listen to each track), GTWIF was released in 2010, but that's obviously wrong, as I picked up my copy in late September/early October 2001. Alas, I no longer have any of my cassettes, not even this one. (That image above is from the Internet.)

But, back to Eyoun El Qalb. From the moment I loaded Nagat's 1980 Soutelphan-published cassette and crunched the PLAY button into gear, I was in love. The first song, "Bahlan Maak," was sweet and wispy, but with a slight almost ironic edge -- think Velvet Underground & Nico's "Sunday Morning" -- at least that's how I felt after hearing the next two songs on the tape. 



"Fakra" and "Ana Bashak El Bahr" are unlike any Arabic music I had ever heard -- then, or since. At the time, I remember getting a whiff of Their Satanic Majesty's Request off of the two bass-heavy psychedelic plodders; but Nagat's breathy voice gave them an even more dangerous-feeling edge. 

Years later, after I had finally upgraded to digital media (and perhaps there ought to be scare quotes around that word "upgraded"), I brought Nagat's cassette into Rashid Music Sales at its last incarnation on Court Street and asked the woman behind the counter (who I just assumed was the wife of one of the Rashid brothers) if she could help me find this music on CD.

Not only did she find a copy, but when I explained that I was mostly getting it for the three aforementioned tracks (which appeared first on the cassette, but last on the CD),  her eyes lit up. It turns out that the composer of "Fakra" and "Ana Bashak El Bahr" was unlike any other in Egypt at the time -- Hani Shanouda founded two of the first pop-music bands in Egypt, including Les Petits Chats, with Omar Khorshid, Omar Khayrat, and Sobhi Bedeir, and, in 1977, Al Masriyyin (The Egyptians), which reunited briefly in 2010.

The other two songs on this album are fabulous live recordings of more traditional Arabic classical pop, although -- and I don't mean to disparage these other two tracks -- it almost feels like two distinct albums. 

"Hani Shanouda is unique in Arabic music," the woman told me. "But unfortunately, this is all that I know of in print by him now. I am so happy this is going to someone who will really appreciate it," she said, smiling at me.

Orhan Gencebay | Leyla Ile Mecnun

First, you sort of need to take a quick peek at this page. Yeah, now's fine. Right. [Dead air, 12 secs.] Okay. Are you back? Yes? No, no, that's fine. I'll wait. Yeah, no--I encourage you to, uh. Right. Great. Okay. [Crickets, 35-40 secs.] So. We good? Kay. Now, with the after-burn of all those mustaches smoldering in your retinas, take a sweet, long listen to this:

Listen to the title song of this CD

I'm almost positive I found this much-sought-after CD at a Turkish music store in the lower east 20s of Manhattan in, like, 2000 or thereabouts. The poet and translator Murat Nemet-Nejat took me there and I'm almost pretty sure he encouraged me to pick up this CD, because (a) he knew I liked what little Turkish arabesque I'd previously heard and (b) I remember him detailing the Layla and Majnun story that, clearly, this album is named after.

I don't listen to this album often, but when I do pull it out, I'm always amazed by the ethereal guitar work and the smooth soulfulness of Gencebay's voice. A really nice way to begin a lazy Sunday morning. 

Get kit and caboodle here.

Olympians | Olympians

GMV, or Greek Music & Video Inc. (25-50 31st Street, Astoria, NY 11102), is a self-described "superstore" about four or five blocks from my apartment here in lovely Astoria. GMV lives up to its self-description; as far as I can tell, they're the single largest retailer of Greek music in the New York City area. Remember Tower Records? These guys are like the Tower Records of imports from the Hellenic Republic.

Despite GMV's proximity to my home, and despite my love for all foreign music burned into optical discs of polycarbonate plastic, I admit that I don't stop in much at GMV. The reason is simple: Other than CDs from Japan, these are the most expensive imports I've ever encountered. It's one thing to pick up five CDs at $2 each from a tiny Burmese store off the 7 train ... even if only one of them is great, you've only spent ten bucks. Greek music typically retails at anywhere from $20-26 for a single CD.

This time, I was lucky. Now, we all know you can't judge a CD by it cover, but when I saw this one, I pretty much assumed it was going to be delightful. It is.

The Olympians are one of three bands mentioned in the 60s Rock section of Wikipedia's Greek Music page. From what I can gather, this collection is a compilation, including songs from 1966-1970. The CD itself was released in 1994 and seems to have more or less vanished from the face of the earth. (I wasn't going to post it if I had been able to find it anywhere online.)

Listen to the first track on this CD

Get it here.

Plastic People of the Universe | Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned

R.I.P. Vaclav Havel. In memory of the great Czech dissident writer/president, here's Prague-based Plastic People of the Universe's first studio album, recorded in the early 70s and finally released in 1978 in France (they were banned in the former Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Revolution of 1989). Heavily influenced by Frank Zappa (from whose song "Plastic People" they took their name) and the Velvet Underground, the PPU put the Prague in Prog Rock. Sorry. Seriously, if you're a psych music junkie you probably already have this or, if not, are perhaps peeing your pants as you realize that--finally!--here it is; you've found it.

Get it all here.


Listen to "Podivuhodny Mandarin"