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Top to Bottom, Left to Right: Agnes//Unknown//Unknown//La Polar//Solea "La Morena"//Conchita

C.O.M.A - Coma (1979)

   
Seriously, how great is that cover? Before becoming French pop star Charles de Goal, Patrick Blain was part of C.O.M.A, an electropunk band that recorded one bizarre album, chock with ideas, then dismantled shortly after. Some will find similarities to Metal Urbain in their sound, especially tracks like "Assaut," but C.O.M.A is perhaps the stranger, dumber beast—an eclectic mix of clangy guitar punk, proto-industrial synth, harmonica, and slapdash electronic drums. Each song is its own experiment.

To my ears, Charles de Goal's distinctive guitar sound has always separated them from their new wave contemporaries in France. You can hear the auspice of that tone in C.O.M.A.  Blain started Charles de Goal just a year after this release, but it wasn't until 1984 that the group crossed over into the mainstream. In 1983, Blain reconvened with C.O.M.A members Philippe Huart and Philippe Ross as Danse Macabre (one of several Danse Macabres of the era) for another one-off album, a very cool untitled 12" ← dark, like early industrial, with that dense experimental atmosphere the French do best. Danse Macabre reunited in the '00s and Charles de Goal released a new album in 2008. 


Clinik Organic Muzak Anatomik

Hell's Bells

Polly Jenkins and Her Plowboys in the Gene Autry film Man from Music Mountain (1938).

Baby at Your Door

MUSTAPHA BAQBOU - Baqbou [EH1271] (198?)

The Marrakech-born Maâlem Mustapha Baqbou is one of the great sentir (or gimbri) players of gnawi trance music. Gnawa is traditionally healing music and shares similar characteristics with Malian n'goni music, perhaps because the gnawi people were once slaves of the Mali Empire centuries ago. A mixture of Islam and West African religions, gnawa ceremonies rely on a maâlem like Baqbou to summon benevolent spirits to the aid of the unwell. In all-night ritual ceremonies known as lilas (or derdebas), participants are drawn into a trance state by the maâlem's sentir and the aid of a priestess. Qraqebs (or castanets) offer rhythmic accompaniment as supernatural entities possess the bodies of ecstatic dancers.

Baqbou was briefly a member of the seminal group, Jil Jilala, a flagship band in the Chaabi movement of the 1970s which sought to revitalize Moroccan music by incorporating the region's many different musical styles and traditions. He continues to perform today. This cassette from the Editions Hassania label features Baqbou's solo vocals and sentir-plucking with no chorus or qraqebs. 

Utmost thanks to Tim Abdellah for identifying the artist and translating the Arabic cassette cover. Be sure to check out Tim's new blog, Moroccan Tape Stash, for more Moroccan pleasures.

NOTE: Thanks again to Tim for his keen eye. It appears that the tracklisting on the cassette cover bears no relation to the songs on the tape. The following appropriation reflects the correct song titles, as identified by Mr. Abdellah. 

بــا قــبــو‎‎‎‎‎
 

Train I'm On

Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten performs in her Syracuse, NY home at the age of 90. Segment aired on Aly Bain's BBC series, Down Home (1985).


See a longer version of this performance here.

THE LATIN JAZZ QUINTET + ERIC DOLPHY - Caribé (1960) + The Latin Jazz Quintet (1961)

Despite being hideously assassinated in his prime by the mass mind's collective will, Eric Dolphy's music has thankfully not been lost to time, as evidenced by the fulsome profferings thereof on-line and on-bootlegs. While I'd be amiss not to point you first to Out There and Out to Lunch, as well as Dolphy's work with Andrew Hill and Oliver Nelson, I can just as enthusiastically recommend these two summerly warm latin sessions (parts at least). Eric Dolphy sat in on two different latin jazz sessions in 1960-61, one with a group called the Latin Jazz Quintet, the other with a group of musicians led by Felipe Díaz who also called themselves the Latin Jazz Quintet. Dolphy is, however, the only common player between the two recordings, which both feature vibraphones to make it that much more confusing.  

Though the music here is hardly adventurous, Dolphy's performances on sax, flute, and bass clarinet boost the joy-creation quotient manyfold. The bass clarinet meandered through time a transient derelict before Eric Dolphy fingered it. The eponymous Latin Jazz Quintet album makes for excellent hot weather listening, though I admit songs like "Cha Cha King" and half of Caribé are better seldom heard. Perfect music for those with no place to hang their hammock.

dolphy summer driving

Early Apparatus: Adam's Ale

Two early underwater diving machines: Frederic Drieberg's Le Triton, 1805 (top) and Karl Heinrich Klingert's copper kettle, 1797 (bottom).

BETWEEN - Einstieg (1971) + And the Waters Opened (1973)

   

Between formed in Munich around two classically trained musicians—minimalist maestro Peter Michael Hamel and Popul Voh oboist/inventor Robert Eliscu—and Roberto C. Détrée, an Argentine bossa nova guitarist. Taking in a future superflautist and two African-American jazz percussionists, Between forged from their diverse musical backgrounds a strange beast. Relying on classical Western instruments, they created avant-garde improvisational music with a wholly Eastern sensibility. They used distorted piano and organ instead of synthesizers and Eliscu's robotic single-stringed motocello to make acoustic kosmische hum. These first two albums have grown on me quite a bit over the years, particularly And the Waters Opened. I also recommend Dharana (1974), a worthy follow-up, if a bit too soaring and majestic at times for my taste.

Entrance...And the Waters Opened

Iron Lung Ladies Club

The Quickening Power of Holy Ghost People

Filmed in Scrabble Creek, West Virginia, Holy Ghost People (1967) joins the Holiness church for worship. Director Peter Adair's ethnographic vérité style creates an intimate portrait of true faith. The congregation sings, dances, speaks in tongues, drinks strychnine, and handles poisonous serpents. The transcendental atmosphere is cut with tension, more so when I tell you someone gets bitten.


Get the Ghost:  watch or download the full documentary.

SECOS & MOLHADOS - Secos & Molhados (1973) + Secos & Molhados II (1974)

Originally the brainchild of João Ricardo, Secos & Molhados took definitive form in August 1972 with the addition of the bisexually charismatic countertenor, Ney Matogrosso. Ricardo wrote many of the songs on the group's first album when he was still a teenager. By the time he was joined by Gerson Conrad, who shared songwriting duties, Ricardo had pretty much formed the concept—face paint, a combination of Portugese vira, tropicália, schmaltz, and glam rock, and a male singer with a very high-pitched voice. After a few less successful lineups, Ricardo met Matogrosso through a mutual friend, Luli (of future Luli e Lucinha fame). After a few months of intensive practice, they played their first show in December and signed to Continental Records almost immediately. They were an overnight success, breaking records within the first couple of months and eventually selling over a million copies.

Ever since I first learned of Secos & Molhados from WFMU's blog post in 2005, I've been fascinated with the group's enormous success there. For one thing, despite Brazil's well-known record of sexual tolerance and a thriving gay community, they also have the highest rates of violence against homosexuals anywhere in the world, with few murder cases ever being solved. Furthermore, Secos e Molhados came on the scene when the right-wing military junta still kidnapped and tortured subversives. If their Indo-Hippie pansexual thing wasn't wild enough, instead of lyrics they quoted poems from the likes of Fernando Pessoa, Julio Cortazar, Oswald De Andrade, and João Apolinário (Ricardo's father). At any rate, Secos & Molhados were a short-lived affair, breaking up less than two years after they formed. They released a second eponymous record (underrated in my opinion though admittedly spotty) and then they broke up shortly after over some money shit. Matogrosso went on to a successful solo career, but hung onto the persona well into the MPB years. He eventually lost the face paint after reinventing himself as a singer of standards in 1986. Ricardo did some fairly interesting solo work but returned to claim the Secos & Molhados name in the late 70s and 80s with little success and no original members.

  

SECOS E MOLHADOS

Epidemic Orchestra

ግልጽ ያልሆነ ጉድጓድ: Tsehay Yohannes

 

The fact that Tsehay Yohannes (ፀሃየ ዮሃንስ) has not been featured on the voluminous Ethiopiques series is a testament to the richness of Ethiopia's musical history. Born in 1961, Yohannes (also spelled Yohanis) started singing for the Kebur Zebegna band at age 14 and recorded his debut album, Tey Munit, in 1974. He later played with the Roha Band and Dadimos Band. Having grown up in Tigrai but born in Gondar, Yohannes sang both in Amharic and Tigrinya and promoted cultural unity in his lyrics. Great dissension remains today between separatist Eritreans, Habesha, and Ethiopians alike. Because Amharic is considered an invasive language to the other cultures, illiteracy is a complicated issue in Ethiopia. Yohannes' hit song "Berta Zemede," a tribute to activist Edeget Beheberet Zemecha, became the official theme for the the "Manbebena Mestaf" and "Meseret Temehert" movements which almost doubled the literacy rate of the country in the 70s and 80s. He released a new album in 2007 and continues to perform today. The videos below range from fried psych funk to the more traditional and show this electric performer's full range as well as his special way of singing with his hands.

***

• See more of the amazing Tsehay Yohannes hear, hear, hear, hear, and hear.
• Wade deeper into Murky Recess' ongoing ግልጽ ያልሆነ ጉድጓድ series.
• Visit the man's lionizing website. 
• A partial discography is posted in the Comments Section.

STEVE TREATMENT - 5A-Sided 45 (1978) + Heaven Knows (Juvenile Wrecks) 7" (1979) + Change of Plan 7" (1979)

  
Not long after moving to the city in the 1975, Steve Treatment fell in with the glam kids who haunted Marc Bolan's central London office, most of whom would people London's punk scene in the years to come. Steve became fast friends with Nikki Sudden, who had already started Swell Maps with his brother, Epic Soundtracks. Steve and Nikki became kind of Bolan's main youngblood associates. It was by their heed that T. Rex brought The Damned on the Dandy in the Underworld tour in 1977. As an interesting aside, Steve Treatment also caught the eye of director Derek Jarman at this time. He helped Jarman cast Jubilee by serving as liason with London's punk kids and can himself be seen in Jubilee's bonfire scene.

With the success of Swell Maps' first single in 1977—released on their own Rather Records—they started to put out music from other bands. Rather's second release was Steve Treatment's debut EP, 5A-Sided 45. Swell Maps served as Treatment's backing band on this record, but you'd hardly be able to tell. Stripped to their essential core, some of these songs have just one or two chords and were recorded in as many takes. The slipshod approach imbues the record with that infectious joy of creating. Everything's drowned in reverb and rendered weird by Treatment's double-tracked vocals, and yet his Bolan kick remains front and center. In fact, an engraving on the run-out groove says "BOLAN WAS STOLEN." Steve Treatment never once played out for these records, despite finding some success on the independent charts. He self-released two more 45s on his own Backbone Records, delving even further into rock'n'roll hysteria. His double vocals can even be heard arguing with each other at the end of "Step Into a Worn Out Shoe!" Treatment would go on to play with Ticket Inspectors in the late 80s and early 90s but didn't release music under his own name again for 25 years. He has become quite active in the past ten years, releasing new music on Messthetics and, in 2006, a CDR compilation of his early recordings.


I don't understand why you bit the head off a raven

Ganesha In Spiderman Incarnation

I want to extend heartfelt appreciation to Doug from Give the Drummer Some on WFMU for devoting an hour of his show to music posted here at Murky Recess. To receive praise from a brother strange to you is beautiful indeed. If you are not already a follower of Doug's ongoing series, Mining the Audio Motherlode, I advise you rectify your unfortunate situation sooner than later.


Murky Recess as through the well-pricked ear behind Give the Drummer Some.

ROS SEREYSOTHEA - Boiled Snail Girl: Chlangden Pops from Phnom Penh's Golden Voice [MR#2, 2011]

   
When Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk gave her the official title, "Queen of Golden Voice," Ros Sereysothea was the most popular female singer in Phnom Penh's psychedelic scene; but ultimately her life was an unhappy one. Born Ros Sothea to a large family in the Battabong province, Sothea's father walked out early on, leaving her mother struggling to provide for her five children. As a way to help support the family, Sothea sold boiled snails in the village and was often heard singing as she walked from place to place. In fact, her family sang and performed to earn extra money; Sothea and her brother, Serey, became known throughout the area for their powerful voices, even winning local singing contests. Sothea would eventually pay tribute to her brother by combining their names.

Changing her name when she moved to Phnom Penh to pursue a music career, Ros Sereysothea sang in a variety of restaurants and bars before catching the attention of Sinn Sisamouth, the most popular male singer in Cambodia. She recorded her first single in 1967 and a number of duets with Sisamouth, eventually catching the ear of the once and future King Norodom Sihanouk (Sihanouk was ousted in 1970 by the Lon Nol government, reinstated by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, ousted again, and reinstated in 1993). Starting in the 60s with the invasion of Vietnam, the US Armed Forces Radio broadcast pop and rock songs throughout the region, including Phnom Penh, where many people fled during the US bombings of rural areas in Cambodia. Inspired by these new sounds, Western-inspired bands popped up around the city, infusing traditional Khmer songs with Anglo pop hooks. The most hopeful time in Sereysothea's life was in the early 70s when she fell in love with a parachutist for the Lon Nol government. She experimented freely with different musical styles, starred in a few movies, and became a consummate parachutist with the help of her lover. After the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot took power in 1975, they sought to purge the country of Western influence. Sereysothea was kidnapped in 1977 and treated with great cruelty. She was forced to dig ditches, sing revolutionary songs for the new regime, and married against her will to one of Pol Pot's assistants, who savagely beat. Her whereabouts after 1978 are unclear, but there were rumors she was found shackled and starved in one of the rural work camps. Another account found her cleaning out the pens at an industrial pig farm and subjected to general humiliation. Regardless, she was never heard or seen from again and most likely died, along with her family, at the hands of Khmer Rouge.

The songs compiled on this collection are inspired by Sereysothea's haunting voice in light of her tragic life. It should be noted that these are not original recordings, but rather products of the karaoke lip-syncing phenomenon endemic to Southeast Asia. Chlangden pop is the pervasive and ribald practice of adding a drum machine track and sometimes other instruments over a classic tune to make the song "new" again. Primarily used in karaoke bars, these songs have been reviled, justifiably, both for their disrespectful treatment of cultural history and also for ruining many songs by drowning out the vocals and muddying the tracks. Just the same, it is almost impossible to have access, in Cambodia as well as in the West, to many of the original recordings. Culled from over 300 hundred Chlangden tracks, Boiled Snail Girl offers songs more or less unavailable in any other form. While far from substituting the originals, Chlangden appropriations like "saryka prot ku" and "lolok sor kut" showcase Ros Sereysothea's fearless experimentation while offering a transcendently mutant view into how classic Khmer singers continue to live on in Cambodian culture today. 

 រស់ សេរីសុទ្ធា
[Tracklist is provided in Comments in both anglicized and Khmer form; any help with translation would be greatly appreciated.]

المغربي يرقص الرجال على تجهيزات المطابخ

Graces Me!

SALI SIDIBE - L'enfant cheri du Wassolon, Vol. 1 (1980) + Formidable! (1982)

Sali Sidibé is one of the best-known kamalen n'goni singers from Mali's southern Wassoulou region. Since the 90s, her Wassalou-pop style has made her popular in the West, exemplified by the Divas from Mali (1997) compilation. She was a forerunner in modernizing the n'goni style and her contemporary music has since become available the world over. And yet any trace of her prior career, purported to span over 30 years, has been more or less lost to the ether—until now. worldservice has only recently proffered the hard proof that Sali Sidibé indeed recorded as early as the late 70s and possibly even the 60s. I'll leave it to wrldsrv to expound upon the particulars, but suffice it to say that the two rescued artifacts there posted provide ample claim to Sidibé as a godmother of modern n'goni and a matchless singer. Let this be the quintessential example of how music blogs are creating new canons and rescuing histories from oblivion.


•L'enfant cheri du Wassolon, Vol.1 (1980)
•Formidable! (1982)

•Another great Sidibé cassette → Radio Mali (197?)