عطلة غامضة: Master Mahwash

Ustad Farida Mahwash (فریده مهوش), singer from Kabul Afghanistan, 198?. In 2006, she became the first woman in Afghanistan to be given the honorary title of Ustad (master). She currently resides in California, USA.

FACTUMS - Gilding the Lilies CS (2010)

With new Gregorian years come new thoughts about old practices. Or maybe it's the simple fact that the best band in America has released a new cassette, and it's so essential to American survival as to best this blog's resolve not to post newly released musics. This being a singular case up to this point, I suppose it's only proper Murky Reset take this opportunity to say, if the creators or monied disseminators thereof take issue with this digital representation of an otherwise analog cultural artifact, kindly cable me via interweb and it will be removed from the sight directly. Specifically, this prerogative would extend to Shawn Reed, member of Wet Hair and owner of the Night People label, and also, of course, Factums.

Whether it's Factums, Rodent Plague, Intelligence, AFCGT, or Children's Hospital, there is a loose group of dudes in Seattle who make warped eleki buumu noise rock I tend to wait each year for with bated breaths. So naturally when I heard Factums had a 2XLP coming out in 2010, I wasn't mad at em. Searched though as I may, I never have seen or put my hands on this item. Instead, what we have here is a cassette with the same songs purported to be on said album, but with a different track order. I don't know if these are the same or different versions of those songs, but the Gilding the Lilies c45 will certainly do for now. It's Factums' best effort yet, and this blog's favorite release from said dudes since the AFCGT CD-R (2008). The boggy analog bliss this tape grooves in makes like a lost tape from Vanity Records, and yet it sounds singularly inevitable, like timeless. People need to hear this. 

Guilting the Lilylivers

Plane Jane #3

 

Vengeance Dive Bomber

Bezunèsh Bèkèlè - Yenat Weletawa (197?)

If you have ever looked for and found the name Bezunèsh Bèkèlè on your Ethiopiques 13 CD or searched out her Greatest Hits compilation, then you'll likely to drool when you hear this album. For those less familiar with the "First Lady" of Addis Ababa's Golden Era, she started performing as early as the 1950s and was the first female singer in the tumultuous capital city to go modern. She gained great popularity as a singer for the Imperial Body Guard Band, and her success continued well into the 1970s. Most of the great Ethiopian musicians of this time played for institutional bands like the Army or Police orchestras. The Imperial Body Guard attempted to overthrow Emperor Haile Selassie in the early sixties, and failed. As a result, the emperor removed the band's 'imperial' title, and the "Golden Age" of Ethiopian pop was ushered in by smaller bands free to self-organize.

The songs featured on this collection were probably first released in the early 70s, though I can't say for sure. The heavy horns, perhaps the Body Guard Band or Dahlak Band, outmatch James Brown for hard fevered funk and Bezu's liltingly casual style belies the reedy sensuality of her voice. The sleeve pictured above, which is from a Philips-Ethiopia 45, is not the official cover for this collection, which is either a bootleg or perhaps released in a neighboring country. If you have more information about Bezunèsh Bèkèlè or this compilation in particular, you are welcome to write in.

ብዙነሽ በቀለ

SCIENCE PATROL - Bandit Ducks From Outer Space 7" (1981)

I noticed in posting Zru Vogue's first album and 7" that the band's side opus, which had been hosted at 7" from the undergound for a time, had apparently expired its hyperlinkage. Many of these great blogs that have given heads so much sound over the years are beginning to show signs of decay. My recent way of thinking has been that anyone inclined to share these old digital artifacts should do so for the sake of posterity. I personally have never found offense in people piggybacking any offerings of mine own. There's a time for honor among thieves, and perhaps a time to rally to fort so that a stable exchange of global goodness might be gained through the proliferation of personal computer storage and subsequent sharings under whatever internet paradigm that might befall us. At any rate,

Science Patrol's original lineup was Andrew L. Jackson, known here as Andrew 'Our Hero' Finkle, and two fellas known as Pity and Spike. The band got its name from the 60s Japanese TV series, Ultraman. Later Jackson's partner in Zru Vogue, Rick Cuevas, and a guy called Dad joined the group, and they started playing out in the Bay Area. The group infused electro-funk synth noise with rap freestyling, Dada-inspired video art, and a Mattel Magical Musical Thing. Jackson and Cuervas started their own label to release Science Patrol's Bandit Ducks From Outer Space, the group's only 7" which has since become a much sought after item. It's hard to say what's so addictive about these two slabs of experimental post-punk funk. The songs tread territory somewhere between Vox Populi! and Dark Day. On "Pop ABCD"—four songs mashed together on the single's B-side—Science Patrol chose random lines from Tristan Tzara poems for the lyrics. Their first single, "Virgil Wilson," about a real person who had a tracheotomy, featured electronically mutilated vocals. The group eventually killed the Magical Musical Thing and looped the sound of its destruction through their Korg synthesizer, along with everything else. Feeding the guitar through the Korg created a clean and creeepy guitar tone that can also be heard in Zru Vogue.


Hep Hep

Plane Jane #2

P-51 Gear Mechanism

ZRU VOGUE - Zru Vogue (LP, 1982) + Nakweda Dream (7", 1981)

  

 Form a new religion/Feed it to the pigeons

Palo Alto's avant-pop darlings Zru Vogue have wooed many an ear with "Nakweda Dream," their woozy independent single voted best by Sub Pop in 1981. The lyrics, some of Murky Reset's favorite of times, were supposedly produced out of Dada sessions and generated on the spot, as is more aptly demonstrated on single's tribal B-side, "Cumulonimbus." The band was essentially a collaboration between grade school pals Rick Cuevas and Andrew Jackson, who continue to play together today as Zru Vogue. They put out their debut LP in 1982, a seemingly more straight-forward new wave effort that descends into funky Liquid Liquid-like territory and ends with "Do the Zru," a dark Dada dance mashup that exemplifies the band's potent joy-creation. They started Zero Risk Records in 1981 to release Zru Vogue (1982) and also to put out their side project Science Patrol's first and only 7", Bandit Ducks from Outer Space (1981), an  experimental synth-psych masterpiece that bears well under the duress of obsessive listening, as I can personally attest to. Cuevas and Jackson have been kind enough to compile Zru Vogue's early demos and proffer them here freely.

Study Pataphysics

Plane Jane #1

B-17 F-Bomber

This Man Made Art Because He Couldn't Help Himself: Steve Ashby's 'Fixing-Ups'

Train In Landscape, 19??

"I wake up with an idea that won't let me get back to sleep. So I get up and make that idea."

The son of a freed slave, Steve Ashby was born in 1904 in Delaplane, Virginia, and never left his hometown. He started working as a farmhand with his father when he was still young. He later worked as a gardener and a hotel waiter before his retirement in the 1950s. After his wife died, had many idle hours. When he made his first life-size sculpture of her likeness, dressed in her clothes from panties to outer wear, the neighbors were shocked at first to see her tending to her daily chores again. He took to making smaller "fixing-ups" that he produced prodigiously out of wood, and found objects like magazine cutouts, tool parts, fabric, marbles, and toys. These art objects, many designed with whirlygigs and moveable parts, ranged from the expressive to the pornographic fantasy, and were often a vehicle for Ashby's keen eye for social details. He stuck an assortment of his sculptures in the ground, on the fence, and in the trees around his yard. The pornographic cutouts were kept under his bed, shared only with great reluctance. The droll perceptiveness of his work is all the more accentuated by the crudenss of the carving. The characters, caught in the middle of their mundane daily lives seem imbued with laughter and terror in equal amounts. Since his death in 1980, Steve Ashby's work has been in many exhibitions of outsider art around the country, and he has been anthlogized in several books on African-American folk art.

Untitled, 19??

Untitled, 197?



Untitled (Cat's Head), 1970s

Pregnant Woman, late 1960s

Appalachia Sublime

2010 - Year In Music

I hope, in the year since my last list of annual favorites, my lack of interest in criticism has been duly indicated. And I don't profess to have heard enough new music to know what my favorite albums of 2010 will be in 2011. At any given time, there are people in far-off places doing amazing things. If ever you feel cynical about the current state of artistic achievement, you should question first your quantum approach, not the liveliness of humankind, which clutters every corner of the world with wonders, just like its human streams of shit. So, fully acknowledging a lack of interest at the moment for listing things, here are musics released commerically this year that I most enjoyed concurrent to this year, 2010:

+current outfits+
 •MI AMI • Steal Yr Face
 •NAKED ON THE VAGUE • Heaps of Nothing
 •NOTHING PEOPLE  • Soft Crash
 •FACTUMS • GILDING THE LILIES C45
 •BALACLAVAS • Roman Holiday
 •SOFT MOON • Soft Moon
 •D-W/L-SS / JBe • Split 7"
 •GROUP DOUEH • Beatte Harab
 •BLANK DOGS • Land and Fixed + Phrases 12"
 •ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI • Before Today
 •WHITE RING • Black Earth That Made Me
 •HAYVANLAR ALEMI • Guarana Superpower
 •LA VAMPIRES MEETS ZOLA JESUS• LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus
 •BLACK ORPHAN •Metal Leg 7"
 •INDIAN JEWELRY • Totaled
 •MOON DUO/BITCHIN' BAJAS • Split 7"
 •A F C G T • A F C G T
 •SILVESTER ANFANG II • Communen Cassetten
 •WUMME • ROG CD-R
Ummm... Did I happen to say?
 •OLSON TWINS & CO.• Gimme Pizza (Chopped & Screwed)

+once old now new again+
 •EMAK • A Synthetic History of EMAK (1982-1988)
 •SAM SPENCE • Sam Spence Sounds
 •OMAR KHORSHID • Guitar El Chark
 •MARIKA PAPAGIKA • The Further the Flame, the Worse It Burns Me
 •NEON JUDGMENT • Early Tapes
 •ABNER JAY • The Original Folk Song Style of Abner Jay
 •ROB JO STAR BAND • Rob Jo Star Band
 •VA//Brazilian Guitar Fuzz Bananas: Tropicalia Psychedelic Masterpieces 1967-1976
 •VA//The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria
 •VA//Afro-Beat Airways: West African Shock Waves--Ghana & Togo 1972-1979
 •VA//The Sound Of Siam: Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz & Molam from Thailand 1964 -75
 •VA//Luk Thung! (The Roots Of Thai Funk)
 •VA//Music from Saharan Cellphones  Vol.1 + Vol. 2
 •VA//Excavated Shellac: Strings--Guitar, Oud, Tar, Violin and More from the 78rpm era
 •VA//The World Is A Monster: Columbia Hillbilly 1948-58
 •VA//Field Recordings From Alan Lomax's Southern Journey 1959-60 , Vols. 1-5
 •VA//Been Here All My Days: Selections From The George Mitchell Archive
 •VA//Written In Blood, Vols. 1-5
 •VA//Turkish Freakout (Psych-Folk Singles 1969-80)
 •VA//Dengue Fever presents: Electric Cambodia
 •VA//Vanity Records: Finest Selection 1978 to 1981
 •VA//Roots of Chicha 2: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru
 •VA//Cumbia Beat, Vol. 1: Experimental Guitar-Driven Tropical Sounds From Peru 1966-1978
 •VA//Peoples' Potential Unlimited Family Album

  •VA//Saigon Rock & Soul: Vietnamese Classic Tracks 1968-1974

Reflect Yourself

White Elephant Escaped From the Zoo With Love (Captain Beefheart Died)

                                      
                                    LETTERMAN: Can you tell us a little of the origin of Captain Beefheart?

                                    VAN VLIET: Captain Beefheart-- a beef in my heart against this society. ♥

Corn Thief

Zebra Bees

Gray Twist

Golden Birdies

Feather x a Feather

Dragon Gown

Dylisheus III

 • Paintings of Don van Vliet
• The Lives and Times of Captain Beefheart (Babylon Books 1971, 2nd Edition)

EDUARDO MATEO - Mateo Solo Bien Se Lame (1972)

   
Eduardo Mateo came to prominence in Montevideo's rock scene in the late sixties. As a boy, he would skip school to play candombe drums in the street with his brother and father. He eventually dropped out altogether and became a beekeeper. His mother gave him a guitar when he was 14; he learned quickly and shortly went on to tour throughout southern Latin America in a variety of samba, bossa nova, and tropicalia outfits. In the mid-60s, he played in a variety of so-called protesta beat bands—basically anglo pop cover bands—as Uruguay's government began to unravel.  Beat bands were disparaged in the press for coopting imperial culture, but many of the Montevideo beat bands were more or less progressive in thinking and strove for higher artistic aims. Employing threatrics and a particular drollness, groups in Montevideo might be dragged on stage in coffins or seen simulating a cello giving birth to a violin. 

Mateo joined the group El Kinto in 1968. By this time, he was devoted entirely to music and a pretty sharp dresser. He served as the band's taskmaster, expecting total commitment to the group. He urged his bandmates toward greater experimentation and imposed his candombe background on the others. When his bandmates' creative output disappointed him, he would scream or storm out. El Kinto led the pack in forging the candombe-beat sound, which exploded in popularity throughout Uruguay and Argentina at the time. By the early 70s, Mateo's long-term drug abuse started to take a toll on him. He began taking amphetamines as early as '64 and was high almost constantly by the time he joined El Kinto. He was indiscriminate, taking anything he could get his hands on, even cough syrup. His appearance deteriorated, and his behavior grew more sporadic. He believed his music benefited from exploring psychoactive states; he urged El Kinto to rehearse on LSD, but they refused, compromising by getting drunk instead. He became increasingly paranoid and difficult to talk to. His voice would trail off on nonsensical divergences  Then, he started hearing voices. 

In 1971, Mateo was asked down to Buenos Aires to record a solo album. What originally was supposed to be a week-long stay turned into two months of sporadic recording. Each morning, the studio would send someone down to Mateo's hotel to try and catch him before he slipped away; but Mateo no longer played music unless he absolutely wanted to. He sought authenticity in each performance, assiduously studied other musical forms (like Arabic, Indian, and Haitian) and was never satisfied with recordings. After months of cat-and-mouse sessions at the studio, Mateo returned to Montevideo one day without saying a word.  Mateo's only solo album is a collection of these recorded tracks in Buenos Aires, hashed together by the De La Planta record label. His collaboration with Brazilian percussionist Jorge Trasante, Mateo y Trasante (1976) has since gained a cult status. He continued to record into the late 80s. Influential, but never again successful, Mateo would drift further into poverty, eventually homeless and pan-handling. Hiding illness from everyone, Mateo was suddenly rushed to the hospital in 1989, diagnosed with an advanced case of abdominal cancer. He died two weeks later at age 49.

ONLY FINE LICKS

Possession

LOS DESTELLOS - Los Destellos (1967) + Constelación (1971)

Enrique Delgado began learning guitar from his mother at age 5 in the slums outside Lima.  By 13, he joined his first touring group.  Growing tired of his son's continual absence and questionable lifestyle,  Delgado's father eventually kicked him out.  For his remaining teen years, he stayed with friends when he wasn't cutting his teeth on the road in mariachi backing bands.  In 1955, Delgado struck out on his own with his folk group, Los Palomillas, but he didn't break new ground until he switched to the electric guitar with Orquestra Fantasia in 1962.  Delgado found himself at the forefront of Lima's Nueva Ola (New Wave).  Beat bands inspired by Anglo pop were a phenomenon the world over, and Peru was no exception, producing a rich variety of garage, pop, and rock records in the 60s and 70s.  In 1966, Enrique Delgado started a new group, Los Destellos, imposing South American folk stylings on his Beat bandmates.

Los Destellos incorporated lilting Andean slum melodies into rock 'n' roll music for their self-titled debut, but the addition of a timbalero is what made them a true innovation.  Timbales were used to keep time in many South American musical styles, but Enrique Delgado used them to incorporate cumbia into the standard Beat ensemble, making him the fathering pioneer of cumbia Peruana.  He would expound on this idea in the years that followed by taking an ever larger ensemble of folk players in a more psychedelic direction.  In this way, Los Destellos also anticipated Chicha, their seventh LP Constelación being a proto-standard of the genre.  In 1975, Delgado's sister, Edith, also joined the band, which by that point had grown to include a sprawling number of musicians and a sizable hype crew.  Enrique continued leading the group until his untimely death in 1996 from medical malpractice.  Edith continues touring today with the current incarnation of Los Destellos.

SPARKLES//CONSTELLATION

• Might I also suggest Purple Chicha: Peruvian Cumbias Rebajadas (A Murky Recess Mix)?
• DATO CURIOSO:  Los Destellos originally had a female singer, but she left the group before they recorded their first record.  Her name was Elsa Salgado, and the band pays her tribute with two of their most popular songs, "Elsa" and "Para Elsa."
• Find Los Destellos' illustrated discography here.

Lumen Aura (Hand of God)

Gotta Get Outta Here!... Gotta Get Outta Here!

Charlemagne Palestine is a peformer/composer/video artist originally from Brooklyn and still active today.  Best known for his compositions in the seventies, he has often been compared to minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Palestine, however, emphasizes ritual over repetition, and the power of trance is specifically integral to his work.  In "Island Song," Palestine drives a motorcyle down a backroad in Hawaii with a an early model video camera strapped to his person, seemingly looking for a way off the island.  Having studied under Pandit Pran Nath, Palestine skillfully harmonizes his voice to the hum of the motorcylce engine, creating an interactive dialogue with his environment.  Shot the same year, "Island Monologue" follows similar themes with Palestine wandering through an impermeable fog, voicing his unbroken solitude.  But this is not the isolation of modern life Antonioni tuned into.  Palestine's work vibrates with human warmth across the chasm, and it is objectivity, the evironment bereft of human inference, which feels vapid..  Palestine stayed busy in 1976, managing also to release these two full-length albums:  Strumming Music and Four Manifestations On Six Elements.

ISLAND SONG
[right click;save target as] or better yet, visit Ubuweb.]

TI-THO - Traumtänzer (1981) + Elefantenjäger (1983)

Ti-Tho-- a dimunitive of the duo's Christian names, Christina Marisa Calcagno and Thomas Stelter-- formed in the early 80s as a part of the emergent Hamburger punk and New Wave scene.  Like many other coagulations of disenchanted young people confined to urban centers, an assemblage of artists, musicians, and political activists began to stew in Hamburg.  In the late 70s, Alfred Hilsberg, a music journalist for the magazine Sounds, coined the genre term, Neue Deutsche Welle, describing the attitude and sound of Hamburg's music scene in his article, "Neue Deutsche Welle - Aus grauer Städte Mauern" (German New Wave - From Gray City Walls).    Speaking with several future luminaires of the genre, Hilsberg discusses in depth the distinctive effect German language and cadence had the NDW sound, and alludes to the environmental influence the fully-realized Economic Miracle had on Hamburg's middle-class. 

Ti-Tho released their first 7" on Hislberg's Zickzack* label.  The A-side is almost radio-friendly, but the strangely underrated B-side, "Die Liebe ist ein Abenteuer" pulses abrasively not unlike Crash Course In Science or Grauzone.  In 1983, the duo moved to the larger TELDEC label for their more accessible but equally great second 7".  Ti-Tho then signed to Polydor in 1985 and released two more 7"s in support of their big crossover LP which never came to pass.  Not an altogether uncommon story.  Very few New Wave bands survived the transition to a major label, and equal few of the cookie-cutter bands crafted in their image lasted any the longer.  If you come to this post a neophyte in NDW, Ti-Tho's first two records are not only a great point of entry, but overlooked masterpieces of the genre in their right.

DREAMDANCE//ELEPHANTHUNTER

*In 1980, Hilsberg started the Zickzack label and released essential Hamburger NDW from the likes of Xmal Deutschland, Abwärts, Leben und Arbeiten, and Kosmonautentraum. In 1984, he started the What's So Funny About? label, which became a major platform for the emerging Hamburger Schule scene as well as a German imprint for Test Dept. Nikki Sudden, and Scratch Acid, etc.