Murky Recess

"There’s something about this record that’s hard to get a grip on. It seems to float on layers of melody rather than rhythm, and in pl...

Scatman Crothers in Coonskin  (1975) Ahm a Niggerman

   (stolen with love from Jeff Winterberg 's Rat-a-Tat-Tat Birds ) Love Life formed their unholy alliance in 1999 when long-time lovers...

Interestingly, the Japanese began to adopt Western medical techniques at the same time they were closing the book on a rather disasterous c...

الحياة وراء الستار رمل

Chaabi Music From Al-Maghrib  is a collection of Moroccan music in the "proto-rai" vein of Sublime Frequencies' 1970s Algerian...

Wang Jiahua performs 甜蜜蜜 (" Sweet Honey") + 瀟灑走一回 ("???") The "Magic Saw" technique involves amping a traditi...

Jean-Claude Vannier arranged much of Gainsbourg's psychedelic sixties soundtracks as well as Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971).  He has...

Serge Gainsbourg created this, his first of many concept records, out of African and Carribean percussion rhythms.  Still relatively new t...

"Tlahoun Gèssèssè ( ጥላሁን ገሠሠ ), known across Ethiopia and Sudan as "The Voice," first came to stardom at age 18 when he join...

"A sado-masochist with a sense of rhythm." – Guillermo Cabrera Infante La Lupe's act was an exorcism.  Her fans gave her the ...

Delhi, India

This mysterious record from the Republic of Guinea in West Africa is a frenzied kora string jam session with light, varied percussion. Almos...

Barry Hannah has been my favorite living author for much of my adult life.  On March 1st, to little fanfare, he became one of my many favo...

[l to r: Andrew (Douglas) Rothbard, keys; Dave Clifford, drums; Joshua Hughes, guitar] San Francisco's Slaves were originally the band ...

Recorded live at Chicago's Fireside Bowl, this is Clikatat Ikatowi's most essential album, and may be the single best document of th...

"No one leaves a star. That's what makes one a star."