Life Behind the Sand Curtain

الحياة وراء الستار رمل

VA - Chaabi Music From Al-Maghrib + Black Plastic Singing Flats (Mississippi Records Cassette Series)

Chaabi Music From Al-Maghrib is a collection of Moroccan music in the "proto-rai" vein of Sublime Frequencies' 1970s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground fame.  Black Plastic Singing Flats is a pan-Asian collection of pop and psych.  True to the hand-made enthusiast quality of these tapes, there are typos and misappropriation of artists to songs, but the point is to hear things you may not have heard before, and then go seek more of it out yourself. 

I separated Chaabi Music From Al-Maghrib into individual tracks and cleaned it up a little bit.  If I recall correctly, I copped Black Plastic Singing Flats from BIG STATES.  And every good sort owes himself a visit to Root Strata where you can find just about any of the Mississippi cassettes available to be found.  On a Doo Wop/Soul tip, I also recommend the two House of Broken Hearts tapes I posted back when.

Chaabi Music From Al-Maghrib (MRC-009)

Black Plastic Singing Flats (MRC-011)

黑暗休会: The Voice of Magic Saw

Wang Jiahua performs 甜蜜蜜 ("Sweet Honey") + 瀟灑走一回 ("???")

The "Magic Saw" technique involves amping a traditional Chinese musical saw performance, and sometimes adding drum machine and effects.  Musical saw was very popular throughout southeast Asia and continues to have its followers.  I am particularly interested in Hong Kong's Fang-Teng Lee, otherwise known as the "The Sound of Magic Saw," who released several albums in the late sixties. Wang Jiahua, for her part, is known as "The Voice of Magic Saw" ( 魔鋸之音), and is a street performer living in Taiwan.

Jean-Claude Vannier est étonnant et passionnant!

Jean-Claude Vannier arranged much of Gainsbourg's psychedelic sixties soundtracks as well as Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971).  He has gained more notoreity recently with the recently reissued L’enfant assassin des mouches (1973), where this video was provided as a bonus.  He recorded  five other very rare solo albums, he was a painter, writer, and the comic radio host of gardening and cooking shows for France Culture.

Andy Votel's JC Vannier mixtape,  Histoire De Melody Vannier, is absolutely essential, and the only readily available means of hearing some of Vannier's amazing soundtrack and studio work.