Nantida Kawbuasai | Jum Kun Bor Dai Ka

 

Listen to "Noi Noi Nhoi Ko"

Grab the album here.

Special thanks to monrakplengthai's Peter Doolan for singer name, track titles and a bit of info about the artist.

Nantida Kawbuasia, according to Peter, is best-known as an actor who was most active in the 1970s and 80s. Apparently, she also sang. These songs (which I'm guessing were probably first heard in films) sound like they were made in the 70s or 80s, and even have a bit of Hong Kong-y proto-Canto- / Mandopop to them. But, really? They're Thai. And pop. And they sound it. 

I love, love, love, love, love the horns. In so many more recent recordings, horns have been replaced by synths / Casios, so it's nice to hear the real thing every now and then, even if I'm not, actually, a synth / Casio hater. Here, they're simply lovely.

I picked this rather plucky gem up at the Vientiane Asian Grocery Store in Seattle's super-diverse Othello neighborhood. I should also tell you that I came away with a few dozen albums from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia--all from groceries / bodegas in Othello. Watch this space for more shares and a special Bodega Pop Live show I'll be doing soon, featuring some of the most amazing tracks from this ridiculous haul.

Oh! I also gave a talk at this year's EMP Pop Conference -- I'll have to write a bit about that, too. More soon; I gotta go get groceries and do a bit of laundry.

P. Ramlee & Saloma | Lagu Lagu Filum Box-Office

I've just reupped this 2-CD set here.

Found in the "World Music" section at Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo, in Spring of 2010. An import from Malaysia.

Actor, singer, comedian, songwriter, screenwriter and film director P. Ramlee died early, at the age of 44, but had by then written, sung and/or played on nearly 400 songs. I know almost next to nothing about him, other than he is considered one of the icons of Malaysian cinema. I also know that his music totally, totally rocks.

Watch "Bunyi Guitar"

Karem Mahmoud | Karem Mahmoud

Get it here.

Found in the Nile Deli on Steinway Street today after very long, satisfying bike ride.

You've gotta love an Egyptian classical pop superstar whose last words, to his surgeon, were "Guard my vocal cords." Mahmoud was just shy of 73 years old at the time. He didn't make it through surgery, alas, though his voice, if not the physical presence of breath through the twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across his larynx, "lives on," as they say.

Their having said that, the truth is, today was the first time I'd ever seen the name Karem Mahmoud; I had no prior knowledge of his existence and thus not the slightest inkling of what the man could do simply by vibrating certain of his mucous membranes. Fortunately, the Nile Deli occasionally still orders CDs, even things as old as this one, which was burned into polycarbonate plastic by Digital Press Hellas in 1989. (Nile Deli also ordered just about every single Amr Diab CD from the 1980s-1990s and, yes, I snatched all 11 of them up -- sit tight, my pretties, all in good time.)

According to his English-language Wikipedia page, Mahmoud was known as the "Melodious Knight," which frankly, in English, has a vaguely unseemly ring to it, at least to these ears, perhaps because it's so close to the "Malodorous Knight." But, then, I'm the one who brought up mucous membranes, so, you know -- grain of salt, or whatever.

My uncalled for and no doubt inappropriate bias aside, this nearly forgotten gem is a quiet (one might even say quite a quiet) revelation. Well worth a listen. 

The Extreme Poetics of Breaking Bad

An essay I wrote exploring the poetics of Breaking Bad, with a beautiful video by Dave Bunting, just went live on IndieWire's PressPlay, here.

For a contemporary cinematic experience as visceral and visually arresting as Breaking Bad, audiences must look abroad, to Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, or further, to films coming out of Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. ... Vince Gilligan’s series puts U.S. cinema to shame, not just in terms of story, but in its execution: The direction, the dialogue, the acting, and—as is evident from the video essay above—the cinematography are, quite simply, of a higher order of intelligence. An intelligence that is extremely, at times obsessively, self-aware.

10 Bollywood Memories I'll Take with Me to My Grave

A piece I wrote (with lots of embedded video) just went live on Indiewire's Press Play here.

Shadia | Best of, vols. 1 & 2

Egyptian actress/singer Shadia, born Fatima Ahmad Kamal, acted and sang for more than 100 films before retiring in 1985. Though I've known of her for a long time, I've only ever managed to find a couple of later CDs, neither of which was (to my ears) particularly compelling. That is, until last week, when I found this two-volume set at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens, about a 15-minute walk from my apartment.

The range included in these two volumes is impressive, beginning with the rather western-inflected "Khamsah Fe Setah" (listen to sample below), to more-or-less traditional sounding Arabic pop and classical. Though she has been recommended to me more than once by various bodega owners in Queens and Brooklyn, there is very little written about her in English, either online or in the two books on Egyptian cinema that I have, which seems odd, considering how long her career lasted--well into the 1980s. (She's still alive and living in Egypt and is, depending on which of the given birthdates I've found is correct, either 80 or 82 years old.)

Get both CDs in a single zip file here.

Listen to "Khamsah Fe Setah"

Chris Marker | PASSENGERS

My review of Chris Marker's amazing PASSENGERS photography show and book (Peter Blum SoHo and Chelsea) is the cover story of Berlin film journal CARGO.

Tan Sri P. Ramlee & Saloma | Film Hits

Five fabulous songs

Download the first CD of this 2-CD set here.

Found in the "World Music" section at Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo. An import from Malaysia.

Actor, singer, comedian, songwriter, screenwriter and film director P. Ramlee died early, at the age of 44, but had by then written, sung and/or played on nearly 400 songs. I know almost next to nothing about him, other than he is considered one of the icons of Malaysian cinema. I also know that his music totally, totally rocks.

Dedicated to twist-lover Brandon Downing, who was just interviewed about his great new book, Lake Antiquity, at Bomb, and another flarf peop, Chris Funkhouser, who lived in Malaysia for--well, I'm not sure how long he lived there.


Bunyi Guitar