Deugain Sain [40 years of Sain] - Various

Y brawd's own selection from Sain's 3 disc bonanza of 40 years' Welsh music in the popular vernacular.

Many will already be familiar with Andy Votel's Welsh Rarebeat primers.....meeah,  "look at these quaint people singing in Welsh in the 70s...who'd have thunk it?" 

Better start here with Sain's collection for a representative overview that strays outside Votel's acid-folk obsessions to take in 70s/80s new wave (Trwynau Coch, Geraint Jarman), 70s Mott / Lizzy melodic rock (Edward H. Dafis  - who bestrode Cambria like denim clad colossi), 90s indie (Catatonia), 00s sunshine psych (Mim Twm Llai) and varied points in-between.

Ever wondered what John Cale would sound like singing in his native tongue (and exactly why hasn't the grand experimenter who spoke only Welsh until the age of eight ever recorded in the language?), then Geraint Lovgreen's yer man. Looking for songwriting spirit of Bill Fay? Check out Daniel Lloyd a Mr Pinc.

An embarrassment of riches for all and for a few, memories of gigs past. (Sometime around 1979, Peel faves Trwynau Coch played the assembly hall at y brawd's school. It was bloody great. Ms. Cadifor, ble'r wyt ti nawr?)

Buy the album.

Artists:
01 Meic Stevens
02 Sibrydion
03 Edward H. Dafis
04 Daniel Lloyd a Mr Pinc
05 Trwynau Coch
06 Geraint Jarman
07 Y Cyrff
08 Mim Twm Llai
09 Gwibdaith Hen Fran
10 Catatonia
11 Bob Delyn
12 Sian James
13 Plethyn
14 Fflur Dafydd
15 Steve Eaves
16 Mynediad Am Ddim
17 Maharishi
18 Tebot Piws
19 Mairi McGuinness a Cor Meibion Llangwm
20 Geraint Lovgreen a'r Enw Da
21 Sidan

Oddi wrth y brawd
Cymru, Lloegr a Llanrwst

Other Channels - The Advisory Circle [Ghost Box 10]

And so to New Media fuelled nostalgia cult as creative act. Old Media - broadcast - time is simultaneous, punctual; New Media time is distributed, fragmented. Eliot's Waste Land modus operandi plays out nightly on cheapo Top 100 Funniest Sit-Com Moments: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" - quite.

In an idiolectically narrowed world of highly personalised memetic re-composition, the OedIpod - to use K-Punk's phrase - has displaced pop as spectacle. Two examples from Momus: Bowie's appearance on Extras and the end of Top of the Pops - reinforce the impression that celebreality has subsumed pop. In each case, we see the triumph of the celebreality principle over fantasy and glamour. From playing the alien on TOTP  - and marginalising a nation in the process - to playing a banal yet unbelievable version of himself in the matey star cameo second series Extras, Bowie's trajectory is emblematic. Stick around long enough and haunting is the inescapable, cheapening effect of modernity.

Less risible and inarguably much more fun are the Ghost Box crew excursions into worlds of BBC Radiophonic Workshop, library music, test transmissions and public information broadcasts. Amongst the scattered electro-static and glitchy debris are some melodic reminders that cutting edge sounds of the 70s were as much the preserve of the parochial and pedestrian as the experimentalists. Indeed, parts of this release sound like a great lost Cluster album somewhere between Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso.

The Ghost Box moniker is well-chosen of course. Earliest cited application of hauntology as music label or genre goes to Ian Penman in mid-90s edition of The Wire. The provenance of the term generally is still more venerable: a neologism coined by Marxist philosopher Jacques Derrida in Spectres of Marx. Derrida invokes not just the ghost of Marx's manifesto  - "a spectre [is] haunting Europe" - but also the shade of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

“Time is out of joint”  cues the tenuous connection between past, present and future. The past always haunts the present, obviously, but equally so does the future. In a Ballardian sense this "nostalgia for the future" introduces a ghost – in this case, Hamlet’s father – and so creates a tear and a fold in history. Derrida takes the point further with “To be or not to be”: introducing haunting into all conceptual constructs, beginning with the concepts of being and time. The nature of being or ontology is nothing less than hauntology-in-action. Ontology is fundamentally spectral.

In the original French the felicitous homophony works a treat: hauntology-ontology (try with French accent). Something of a sense of humour then these Marxist philosophers.

Humour too plays a role in Ghost Box plunderings. Though it's frequently humour on the edge of hysteria, panic and neurosis. Their treatment of the public information film Frozen Ponds is utterly chilling and made scarier than original creators could have ever imagined.

Make of all this what you will; Derrida is de writer...

Oddi wrth y brawd
civil defence is common sense

Disaro - Modern Witch (2010)

Bringing things up to date with young gun neophytes of low-battery 80s drum machine chug; devotees of caningly repetitive electro-punk vignettes fronted by dissolute female vocalist.

And let's praise artists for whom the 80s mark the beginning not the end of the holy mystery. The UK hauntology crew have betimes built an aesthetic out of attempts to claw back a glimpse of just-out-of-reach 70s wonderlands. Fellows such as Ghostbox and Mordant create music that dines out on wink of the eye cultural signfiers; grist to the critical mill for bloggers and Wire journalists keen to pull up a chair at the meme feast - drooling all the while over those hyper-designed album covers.

Extend the same courtesy then to Modern Witch and a more recent re-assemblage and re-enactment; dishing up pleasures a-plenty with a studied air of glassy-eyed ennui.

Oddi wrth y brawd
witchy women

                               

Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret - Soft Cell

In which y brawd atones for throwaway phrase Soft Cell and their ilk. For once the Mood labels on allmusic.com are on the money: passionate, provocative, hedonistic, brash, theatrical, sleazy, campy. Beyond the faux glamour and tawdry thrills, however, lie the enduring appeal of perfect synth pop and that voice. In time Marc would learn how to sing. Here the waywardly off-key warble is the grit in a particularly slinky oyster, and nowhere more so than on Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: the swell of keyboards and vocals as we rise into the chorus.... bona fide pop genius.

This year's Marc album, the very fine Varieté, is billed as a swansong. Looking back on the past 30 years, it gives nostalgic perspective to the milieu first explored in N-SEC. Buy it. Pay a visit to Marc's place.

Oddi wrth y brawd
torch

Martin Rev - Martin Rev

Tales are told of Ralf & Florian strong-arming copies of Suicide’s first album from Lester Bangs. Yeah...

God knows what record company / personal issues shenanigans led to this solo album release in 1980 on the Lust/Unlust label, only a year after 1979's Marvel, which in all but two tracks is the same album entire. No matter. This one idea = one song collection finds Martin perfectly poised between sublime synth pop (first two tracks: Mari and Baby O Baby) and proto-industrial experimentation (the rest). Highly influential. Pointing the way to Soft Cell and their ilk on the one hand, and on t'other the  PTV / Coil axis.

The naive synth melodies are a delight. Percussive industrialism riveting.


Oddi wrth y brawd
stigmata

Donovan Quinn and the 13th Month - Donovan Quinn and the 13th Month (2008)

Yeah heavy and a bottle of Quinn's lo-fi basement country-folk. John Wesley Harding glimpsed thru a drowsy haze of grass-chewing Americana. With a sound fleshed out with occasional sympathetic organ, piano and fiddle, Donovan plays out his frayed preoccupations over a sleepy-afternoon, showing strong songwriting, mostly expounding crumbled relationships and a casual  investment in spiritual imagery and allegory in the Christian vernacular. A low-key gem of an album.

(New collection Your Wicked Man out now on Soft Abuse. Donovan also plays leading role in the psych-ier Sky Green Leopards)

Oddi wrth y brawd
moose indian, indian moose

Click et Craque - Monsieur Mo Rio

Alongside Monsieur Mo Rio, Stereolab are glue-sniffing thugs and Belle and Sebastien are tooled-up psychopaths. Yes, it's bonjour soleil as you enter the charming, skewiff  world of MMR. Not to say there's a lack of experimental edge: MMR is after all a member of the Schwaben German collective Metabolismus. 

Click et Craque is a collection of tracks from mid 90s cassettes. A penchant emerges for taking a base popular tune - e.g. Good Day Sunshine; Les Sucettes; Sing a Song (!)  -  and defamiliarising and defracting it through a twisted electro-pop lens.

A delight. Just know what you're getting yourself into.

Oddi wrth y brawd
tip top

大江慎也 & ザ. ルースターズ/ Oe Shinya & The Roosters

1983/84. The beating heart of The Roosters, Oe Shinya is at the end of his  tether. Whether underlying psychic fragility leads to mental collapse or the wrong kind of drugs (or both)...the signs are all too obvious: the sharp sussed rocker has put down his guitar and taken to lying on a hospital bed on stage, getting up only to dance in an unsettlingly uncoordinated way.

The writing has been on the wall for some while. 1981's magnificent Case of Insanity:
"When my mind's away in the daytime
Watching TV with no sounds
You know I wanna make my life complete
It's harder and harder as time goes on
Oh I don't care, I don't care
'Cause now I'm just a case of insanity"

Ironically, the songs Oe gives The Roosters during the onset of his illness are among his very best. Post-Oe, The Roosters go downhill pretty quickly: lumpen 80s rock interspersed with pointless VU covers in big 80s back-combed hair.

Meanwhile, Oe retreats to his hometown in Kyushu - rumours have him tilling the earth and/or teaching in a cram school - working on his recovery. He is back in the Roosters /  Roosterz on and off but it isn't the same. He returns proper with a brilliant solo album in 1989, Peculiar (anybody who can supply y brawd with a link to this will earn undying love). A long time on the mend, the '00s have seen a triumphant return to form with new material as well as diginified reunion gigs with the original Roosters line-up (Fuji Rock 2004 a notable highlight).



Y brawd had the privilege of a brief chat with the man after his solo outing at Fuji Rock 2006. Standing in a post-gig line to get product signed; sticking out like a sore thumb next to teenage nu wave arrivistes (males in skinny ties) and original fans (females approaching middle-age but still living the dream). Oe-kun seemed quite shocked as y brawd reached the front of the queue and declared admiration in dodgy Japanese. So much so that the great man was moved to stand up and offer a bow of thanks...which of course wasn't on.

Y brawd still doesn't know the Japanese for: "No, sirrah. You are a hero of the Japanese new wave, and you bow to no one".

Time's arrow flies backwards:
01  Good Dreams  [1984]
02  Hard Rain  [1984]
03  C.M.C.  [1984]
04  I'm Swayin' in the Air  [1983]
05  Sad Song  [1983]
06  She made Me Cry  [1983]
07  Case of Insanity  [1981]
08  Let's Rock (Dan Dan)   [1981]
09  Sitting on the Fence   [1981]
10  One More Kiss   [1981]
11  Girl Friend   [1981]
12  Hey Girl   [1981]
13  恋をしようよ [1980]
14  Rosie  [1980]




Oddi wrth y brawd
get happy

Arkhaiomelisidonophunikheratos - Satanicpornocultshop

As deranged, diverse and compelling as cover and title would suggest. Band hail from Osaka, though this is incidental to their defining achievement: a multiplicity of sound layers pierced by one single breakcore beat making for a destabilisng futuristic hip hop attack, alternating with fried folkery in the female Fursaxa vein.

Accordingly, opener Next Year's Snow lovingly mimics Vashti Bunyan to the point of pastiche. Only gentle glitches give warning of cut-up madness to come. Next up, (R.I.P.) Tide, a psychedelicised mash up of Pentangle's Light Flight, in which we are invited to get our  collective freak on, repeatedly. Saddam Fed Bird While Jailed ups the ante on beats and samples and ushers in Stanley knife mayhem of next two tracks, slashing, ripping and pasting multifarious field recordings, riffs and songs and shaping them into howling beast beat  monsters. A light and dark pattern emerges as the acid-fried harmonium chill returns with the respite of Glaneurs and Diamond Day hip hop of Pinky (the latter with further exhortations to get our freak on - a given by this point). Thence the breakcore-tastic Custom Drum Destroyer delivers on its title: wholesale lo-fi sample of No Fun mid-way through is nothing short of sublime. Left-handed Darling is twisted J-Pop. 9 Headed Monster begins by asking: "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" - a leitmotif for all this light and dark dialectic bethinks y brawd. So thick and furious are the subsequent breaks that the answer has to be "dazed and confused witch, thank you very much". Things then tail off into pleasing mellowness: a stab at 80s pop with Paradise; more Vashti / Fursaxa shenanigans on Kanariya; Margo Guryan over easy on Nido; a reprise of Next Year's Snow; to finish, a mad big beat electro-debris cover of Francoise Hardy's unassailable Comment Te Dire Adieu.

Easy then to understand criticism from some quarters aimed at the lack of full on breakcore onslaught with this release. However, to these ears the leavening of beats and samples with female oriented chilled out pop and free folkery work their magic. Proving perhaps that nothing is ever entirely black and white.

Oddi wrth y brawd
for twitchy witchy folk everywhere

Summer and Smiles of Finland - Various, A Fonal Records Promo Compilation (2006)

Additional tracks from previous posting faves coupled with a best of rest overview. 

Running order:

Paavoharju  (1,2) - lamenting exotica and glitch transmissions from collective of ascetic born-again Christians, sounding somewhere between Bollywood, church hymns, beautiful pop tunes and ambient esoterica.

Islaja (3,4,5) - young, clearer eyed Nico acid-folk chanteuse; beautifully phased, magically real.

Islaja: Pimeyttä kohti from Sami Sänpäkkilä on Vimeo.

Kemialliset Ystavat (6,7,8) - free form pilots of short spooling instrumentals building layers of simple repetitive riffs into laminal mudcakes; weaving ghosts of folk song into huge tunnels of drone.

Shogun Kunitoki (9)

Es (10,11)

Kiila (12)

Risto (13, 14) -  2 finsk mark version of Spector's wall of sound (in a garage)?

TV-Resistori (15, 16) - childlike melodies and cheesy synths ahoy; sound disconcertingly like a Japanese Stereolab

Es (17)

Visit Fonal records for free downloads, news, updates and to buy the music.

Oddi wrth lähimmäinen

tampere nights

Magneettimiehen Kuolema [Death of Magnet Man] - Pekka Streng & Tasavallan Presidentti (1970)

 

Presiding spirit of Fonal label, Pekka Streng's sole two albums of mystic, humanist psychedelia and acid-folk have enduring appeal and ensure continuing cult status. His first record Magneettimiehen Kuolema is the more lysergically euphoric of the two and prog band Tasavallan Presidentti along for the ride.

From the magical, intimate opener Gilgamesh Pekka engages ears and heart. Language is no barrier. A sense of yearning, transcendence and hymnal celebration underpinned by Pekka's keening vocals. He's really saying something, you don't know exactly what and it matters not a whit.

He died in 1975 at the age of 26. You need some Pekka in your life.

Oddi wrth y brawd
gate is open


 

Tuota Tuota [Well, Well] - Kiila

Tuota Tuota (2009) is Kiila's third outing and while there is no beginner's Fonal band, Kiila come close.  The motifs in the songs are not easy to render - elk antlers, tree bark, sound of rapids, fog, letters, calves, fingers - but the music speaks a universal tongue, stringing together loose threads of electrified folk, psychedelia and occasional far out improv jamming.

A sense of freedom permeates, upholstered with firm structure and well-rehearsed perfomances, whilst leaving enough primitive electro-detritus and sprawling fiddles to remind you that this is no ordinary folk-rock record. It trades in lush, North-European  arrangements and silvery group chants and wayward fiddle playing a la ISB (the spirit of the bowed gimbri abides). The rootsy, acoustic traditionalism of the songs get the patented Fonal left-field spin that by the closing minutes of Pollutukin Mietteet have morphed into phased funk guitars, wildman organ and ornery trumpeting. An odd end to an album mostly intent on homespun, crafted revels.

Oddi wrth y brawd
kiitos kiila

Huomen Tuone - Tulasi

Dusk and the Finnish wilderness. A forest clearing circled in light. Around pine-scented blaze  a troupe of wandering folk gathered. Smiles exchange. Take a seat. Music begins....flute, tablas, finger cymbals...Sips from communal bowl. Sleighbells appear in your hand. Darkness brightens. Low chants commence. This feels good. Gooood....

Oddi wrth y brawd
fonal freak fun

Kesämaan Lapset [Children of the Summerland] - Es

Y brawd declares a week of Finnish delight centred around Sami Sänpäkkilä's Fonal label. Harking back to days when an album's label stamp was indicative of a definable sound, Sami has orchestrated one of the most fruitful, stylistically consistent labels of the decade; stock in trade: Finnish experimental folk and electronica. 

Accordingly, we open with Sami's own transcendent Kesämaan Lapset (2009) under the Es moniker. Released four years on from the kaleidoscopic drone and chant of Sateenkaarisuudelma, Kesämaan Lapset dials down the former's glorious sprawl while exploring accessible electronic soundworlds in tribute to 70s Finnish acid-folkie Pekka Streng (more on Pekka later this week). This would explain the record's nostalgic summer feel, though eyes are set on much more distant and ethereal horizons than Streng's song-based structures.

We know we're on to something very special from the get go: Ennen Oli Huonommin fanfares a flamboyance of irridescent analog chirrups and twitters that skitter and dazzle across four major key minutes. Clearly, we're at the bright electronica end of the Fonal spectrum far  from the lo-fi folk forest dwellers. For all that, the opening conjures a sense of immanence and mystery that weave through the rest of the listen.

Next comes cheery homespun ditty Kesa Ja Hymyilevat introducing spacy vocals and free-roaming electronics. Vaguely reminiscent of Magical Power Mako. Then things start to get really interesting. Sateet Sun Sielusta plays with some piano phrases only to build into a celebratory cascade of drone combining disciplined minimalism with mind-manifesting kosmische synthesiser worship. 

Still reeling from the meteor shower of trickling lines and deep-space drones the listener hops aboard title track Kesämaan Lapset and a twenty minute ride from personal space and childhood summers past to euphorically expansive vistas of the possible. The first phase uses a repeated piano phrase  - almost a Dvořák steal - as nostalgic and pastoral grounding. This develops into electronic trills, washes and field (or maybe simulated) recordings  summoning woods, streams and sea-shore adventure. The final enveloping section builds to a heavenly crescendo worthy of Popol Vuh at their most blissed out and transcendent. Heady stuff.

The closing, comparatively brief Haamut Sun Sydamesta is a necessary psychedelic come down, serving to remind us that however abstracted the journey has been, this is a singer-songwriter album at heart. Which brings us back to Pekka.

This recording will enrich your life.

Let y brawd know what you think.

Oddi wrth y brawd
pekka up

Lunes - Headdress

Eerie stuff. Second album by Texas psychedelic duo is dark Americana meditation. These das blues Jim, but not as we know'em. Blues drone. Can you get to dat? The high plains still drift albethey street-lit canyons and brick dusted by-ways. Kosmischer Amerikaner. Howdy.

Oddi wrth y brawd
uncle eerie

Preludes Airs and Yodels (A Penguin Cafe Primer) - Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Y brawd's favourite selection from the wondrous oeuvre of late Simon Jeffes and chums.


Proof that the minimalist aesthetic does not preclude exuberance, invention and wit - not forgetting itchy melodies and infectious jingles. Endlessly recycled by somewhat lazy soundtrack compilers, Music For A Found Harmonium somehow remains as fresh as ever and is retooled x 2 here by Celtic folksters Patrick Street and even more appositely by The Orb. Cello work of co-founder Helen Liebmann gives root and heart to the varied ensemble configurations. Airy melodies, building rhythms and some audacious experimentation such as Telephone and Rubber Band: based around a tape loop of a UK telephone ring tone intersected with an engaged tone, accompanied by the twanging of titular elastic band.


A reminder of how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing.

Oddi wrth y brawd
take a seat

Alomoni 1985 - Karuna Khyal



"Imagine the Jehovah's Witnesses were right and the world had ended in 1975. Imagine a tribe of Lousiana backwoodsmen who'd been reared on a diet of freak-out albums....voodoo rituals and re-runs of Bewitched. Yup, Karuna Khyal is that kind of paganism" - Japrocksampler

Very much a companion piece to Brast Burn's Debon. Some says credit goes to Magical Power Mako...who know...?

Oddi wrth y brawd

dig

Debon - Brast Burn

Get past the first few unnerving kakaphonic minutes and torpedo los! for full on shamanic chant fest:

"Emerging from the woodland murk of a single pulsing synthesiser, Brast Burn's glorious chaos was a vital and catchy hog-wash of Cajun chanting and slide guitar, massed sleighbells, Amon Duul I style single note piano, recorders and tin whistles, rudimentary electronics, highly reverb'd hand drums played by people trying to convince us they possess a full kit, and gnarly repetitious lead vocals" - Japrocksampler

From 1974, released today it would be hailed as free ereki-folk classic. Deeply weird. Very good.

Oddi wrth y brawd

burasto

Vacant World - Jacks

"Nihilist doom folk in advance of the third Velvet Underground album, anyone? Welcome to the debut with the most astonishingly original opening track ever. Imagine Love's Signed D.C. played by a free-jazz ensemble intent on uniting the Communist Bloc rage of European Son with a shed-building competition" - Japrocksampler

Rest of 1968 release is more underwrought but still essays a fine trade in downer psych. A miserablist lysergic gem.

Oddi wrth y brawd

one-eyed jack

GS パーテイ / Group Sounds Party - Various

Y Brawd brings you a roll call of the GS great, good and so so: The Spiders, The Jaguars, The Tigers (see a pattern emerging?), The Golden Cups, Mops, The Gullivers and more. In J. Cope's estimation: Tigers too fey; Spiders wild enough; Mops too weird, too punk, too real, too ugly; The Golden Cups too fumed up on paint thinners; The Jaguars ultimately won the day.

Get with it, just don't ask for a track-list 'cos there ain't one.

Oddi wrth y brawd

what is group sounds

愛のサイケデリツク - ザ。ヘア / Psychedelic Love - the HaiR

GS revivalists the HaiR are keen as wasabi, pushing all the right buttons: channelling US R'n'B via The Small Faces, Zombies and Yardbirds, filtered thru Ventures 60s surf punk. Taken at face value, a right treat. Approached with face of po, well....

Choose your masks.

Oddi wrth y brawd

saiku

Gorgeous Johnny - Sky Green Leopards

A certified grower from one of that clutch of US bands  - Wooden Shjips, The Warlocks... - wholly at odds with notions of modernity. No use fussing about ignorance of so-called progress or whining about supping from the bone dry cup of the 60s, this is melodic folk pop of the highest order and demands a listen.

And no surprise at the spirit of Barrett presiding: mandraxed acoustic strumming, questionably tuned instruments, passionately off-key vocals and ramshackle drums that just about manage to keep the train moving.

A drowsy psych delight.

Oddi wrth y brawd
johnny's theme

Live, Meadowbrook, Michigan, 12th September 1971 - Funkadelic

"Yeah, take care of your body.

The funk will funkatelicise everyone within the range of this music.

Don't hold yourself rigid, unless the occasion calls for it.

Let your minds be lather-like.

George Clinton chief coke-head is going to sprinkle funk from one end of this pavillion to the other...." and  - wham! -  straight into Alice in my fantasies.

Heavy funk jam wig outs. The mighty Maggot Brain (second track! WTF?).

Has to be contender for place in top 5 live albums of 70s.

Free your mind and your ass will follow, yes indeed.

Oddi wrth y brawd

all your goodies

Raw Power Live [Legacy Edition 2010] - Iggy and the Stooges

On the sound working assumption that all right minded mothers will anyway be buying this release in its frugging full bit glory, y brawd is only posting live CD extra rather than main event: Bowie's urgent trashy mix reinstated to heart-stopping effect.

Think of this as a cheeky amuse-bouche, exciting the taste buds with garage jams, extemporised "poetry", over-ripe stage banter and Stooges: brutal, sordid and on the one.

Oddi wrth y brawd

doojiman

Kick Ass [Music From The Motion Picture] - Various

Top quality sherbet. Fruity dialogue - sadly, children swearing remains funny - intersperses a well chosen collection of the revived, recent and re-tooled:

01 Stand Up - The Prodigy layer big big beats over Manfred Mann's Earth Band's One Way Glass.

"It's fucking awesome"

02  Kick Ass - Mika vs Redone R Hi NRG

03  Can't Go Back - Primal Scream find their mojo (one more time).

 "I never said Batman"

04  There's a Pot Brewin' - The Little Ones er....play

05  Omen - The Prodigy are manic - i.e. at their twisted best.

"Bring it on"

06  Make Me Wanna Die - The Pretty Reckless are.... pretty average.

"I'm just fucking with you daddy. Look, I'd love a French made model 42 butterfly knife"

07  Banana Splits - The Dickies are even worse than memory serves.

"It's in the shape of a giant cock"

08  Starry Eyed - Ellie Goulding is ahem, starry-eyed

09  This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us - Sparks demonstrate how once singles could be both pop-tastic and envelope pushing. Still fresh as fuck.

"Out of Kick Ass and Red Mist, who do you think would win in a fight?"

10  We're All In Love - New York Dolls sound disconcertingly like Blue Oyster Cult on this 2006 "come back"

11  Bongo Song - Zongamin is left-field dance producer Susumu Mukai; there be bongos here

12  For a Few Dollars More - Ennio Morricone, 'nuff said.

"Play time's over kid"

13  Bad Reputation - The Hit Girls do a fair imitation of a Runaways/Suzie Quatro

14  An American Trilogy - Elvis Presley would definitely win in a fight (air kara-tay). Oh, and 'cos he da king.

"Show's over motherfuckers"

Oddi wrth y brawd

no power, no responsibility

A Rainbow In Curved Air - Terry Riley

A nod to the master. Whatever the preferred label - minimal, pattern, phase - Riley gets there first in 1963 in its purest form In C. Then A Rainbow in Curved Air, 1967, showcases both the "straightforward" pattern technique and improvisation within the patterns, making for gorgeous timbre changes on the synthesizers and organs; presenting a series of contrasting sections that have become the trademark structure in his work.

In time the whole world (and Pete Townshend, rock boys and girls - check electronic diddling on Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again ) would listen.

Oddi wrth y brawd
repetiton repetition repetition

Tasankokaiku - Shogun Kunitoki

Synth and organ driven blissed out minimalist repetitions in Terry Riley styled psych face off. Finland's Shogun Kunitoki hail from the always interesting Fonal Records roster (Paavoharju, Islaja, Kiila, Kemialliset Ystävät) and their 2006 debut Tasankokaiku trips and glides horizonward on gorgeous keyboard tones and breezy ring modulator dervishes propelled forward on low-key organic drums. Nothing short of a delight.

Trivia buffs will be reassured to learn that outfit's name comes from The Last Ninja: an action-adventure computer game first published in '87 for the Commodore 64 (Kunitoki, the evil Shogun of the Ashikaga Clan, has long envied the powers of the Ninja brotherhood and would do anything to acquire their knowledge. To this end, he has sworn an oath to their total destruction......apparently).

Home experimentalists will be thrilled that SK's online shop boasts the mystical shogun kunitoki strobe light DIY kit. Those crazy Finns.

Oddi wrth y brawd
sho nuff

Touched EP - Blondes

Analog synthesizers with a kosmische patina. Mining and muddling musical genres from decades past. Hypnagogiac blissed-out, vintage vibes. A twilight realm of gooey synth lines and twisted vocal loops slathered atop a patient 4/4 pulse.

On their 2010 debut, Blondes take several cues from Lindstrøm’s space-disco marathons, but condense them into more digestible, diverse pieces, lying at the intersection of indie and dance. Electronic pop rules throughout, with a double whammy discoid jam kick off courting compatibility with all things Balearic and chillwave.

Gertcha.

Oddi wrth y brawd
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Dirtbox EP - Harmonic 313

Towering, seismic basslines pit against needling, crumbling turn of 70s synths, bent vaguely sinister. Beats smothered in bass sparking the rumble of a 747 (landing on your heart) while vintage Moog bleeps and burps. Detroit techno, dubstep, and instrumental hip-hop mixed into a half melodic sonic palette. Lovely.

Oddi wrth y brawd

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