So here´s some great new music I´ll came across these days and a film recommendation in the end.
First is Juan Wauters from Uruguay whose long player “La Onda de Juan Pablo” is released lately by captured tracks. Simple eclectic latin influenced songs, sometimes with strange flutes or saxophone arrangements, telling stories of the life of the fictive character Juan Pablo, making his living as an immigrant in Mexico.
Fresh and hypnotic & in no way perfect.
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Another record about a fictional character is Jeff Parker´s “Suite for Max Brown” released by International Anthem, the label from Chicago, whose latest releases by Makaya Mc Craven or Jaimie Branch were mesmerizing.
Jeff Parkers´new Record is another example of how thrilling a melange of jazz, club sounds, mixed with some flavor of ambient or post – rock elements (he was playing guitar with tortoise) can sound like.
Listen as well to the 7″ Max Brown :
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Let´s now listen to some lovely Compilations and Reissues:
Luaka Bop continues it´s world spiritual classics series with the amazing compilation “The time for peace is now” with an amazing heartbreaking selection of early gospel, and soul music. The subtitle” Gospel music about us” shows the importance of this demand these days more than ever.
Listen:
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Lets go on with sweet soul: Eula Cooper´s rare 7″ Try / Let our love grow higher – as well as her only LP is reissued by Numero records these days, at least the 7″ is still to get in Germany.
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At last some film recommendation: Les Misérables / German: Die Wütenden (Why not “Die Elenden”? – which would be the exact translation, as it connects to the Victor Hugo novel ) is out since last week in Berlin Cinemas, a film about the situation in a french banlieue Montfermeil and three police cops dealing with the situation in the projects.
The director Ladj Ly has been living in the suburbs and even been to jail for 3 years. Although some of the characters like the circus people or the muslim brothers are drawn quite stereotypic, in the end, the three main protagonists are shown with all their moral challenges and contradictions in an realistic view. Reminds me of great french films about the Banlieus like “la Hain” (Hate/ Hass) by Mathieu Kassovitz or Depphan (Dämonen und Wunder) by Jaques Audiard a few Years ago, as well as the series “The Wire”.
A end of the year mixtape featuring angry jazz tracks by jaimie branch, makaya mc. craven, some slo-mo house 7″ by the you need friends not discos label as well as some personal indie, folk & reggae faves of the year by little wings, richard dawson, tommy mc cook, the black seeds, derya yilderim, issam hajali, artur verocai, the sofites, marisa anderson, water from your eyes and winslow.
Tracklist:
1.The old year
Winslow
2
Hey Hey girl
The softies
3
light be bright
Litte Wings
4
Somebody Else’s Song
Water from your eyes
5
Yawma Konna
Issam Hajali
6
Sylvia
Artur Verocai
7
Kar YaAar
Derya Yilderim and Grup Simsek
8
Prayer For Amerikkka Pt 1 & 2
Jaimie Branch
9
Warriors Of Peace
Azar Lawrence
10
let´s make peace and stop the war
Funk inc.
11
Exploration Intro / The Jaunt
Makaay Mc Craven
12
Madonna a dítě (II)
Daniel Holmes
13
Everybody Anyone (Edit)
Pigmalião
14
The Awakened
Tofu Resistance
15
Dead Dog In An Alleyway
Richard Dawson
16
Random Rules
Silver Jews
17
Hypnotized Again
The Black Seeds
18
Greetings
Tommy Mc Cook ft. King Tubby
19
sun song
Marisa Anderson
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Tree photo shot in sicily
by the little dog laughed,
120 min
12/19
ps. rest in peace david berman, your music will stay…
Except for some lovely Stereolab reissues, two records are on heavy rotation since of few days: Issam Hajali´s Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard, the 10 th. release by Habibi Funk records and Mount Eerie´s second collaboration with Julie Doiron called Lost Wisdom Pt.II.
So let´s start with the Mount Eerie & Julie Doiron LP, the first release by Mount Eerie – at least not directly – touching the loss of his wife Geneviève Castrée, like in the two amazing but dark LP´s Now Only / A crow looked at me.
But still the songs are fragile stripped – down melancholic singer / sonwriter tunes going back to the early Mount Eerie days of “dawn” like in “When I walk out in the museum” or in the great “love without possession”.
And as you can hear it, it´s all about big emotional themes like love, or memory of love, loss, fears or belief but less in an narrative way but more returning to hypnotic song structures, and yet there´s even an electric indie guitar turning up in widows like we were in 1999.
So, it´s another great eclectic masterpiece of not more than 30 Minutes although I would have wished, Julie Doiron´s amazing voice would be a bit more more dominant. So looking forward to Lost Wisdom Pt. III, IV, V…
Love without possession
Speak sky
blow breaths
exhale to dissipate
the always gathering clouds
of yearning memory
of all that we foresaw
laid out before us
unlived.
Dropped from a height
back into the open ocean, it’s all horizon.
This sky mirroring emptiness
is where I first found you.
credits
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Concerning the Habibi Funk Release, Issam Hajali, I have nothing more to say, that I ordered the LP without listening, though all of the label released were amazing and this one is one of the most exciting.
Habibi Funk:
The completely unknown debut album of Issam Hajali (Ferkat Al Ard) fuses jazz and folk with Arabic and Iranian influences into unique beauty. Originally released in a limited run of 75 cassette tape copies.
Issam Hajali might be most known for being the singer and main composer of the Lebanese band Ferkat Al Ard. While they recorded 3 albums only their classic „Oghneya“ release saw a vinyl release and is probably the most in demand record in the Lebanese record collector scene (A copy changed hands in Beirut this year for 5000$). Before the band came together Issam recorded a debut album called “Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard” in 1977 in Paris, most likely in May or June.
Issam Hajali had to leave Lebanon after the Syrian intervention for political reasons and spent one year in exile in France. At this time he could only afford one studio day to record the whole project together with a band compromised of some musicians from France, one from Algeria, one from Iran and a friend from Beirut called Roger Fahr, whom had left Lebanon around the same time. While you can hear the musical roots of what later became Ferkat Al Ard in “Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard”, the album also differs from Issam’s later recordings. “It’s more of just me, whereas the sound of the band was more of a group effort”, he recalls.
Melancholic stripped-down, guitar-based folk is followed by jazz-fused breaks and every here and there that unique sound of the santour glistening through. While the music is very accessible, some song structures are rather atypical neglecting the common patterns of verse, hook, verse, hook. The lyrics mostly trace back to the poetic work of Palestinian author Samih El Kasem with one song also written by Issam, who composed the music for all of them. In late 1977 Issam could return to Beirut and took the not yet released album back with him. He could only afford to spend a short time in the studio, just to add little bits and pieces like percussion to finish an album that still felt unfinished to him. Even back in Beirut his economic situation was complicated, and it was impossible to find a label which was still operating under the circumstances of war.
So, he started dubbing the tapes himself and producing black and white copies at the corner store. Most of the copies of the album were sold or given to friends. One record shop had them on the shelves on a commission basis. But as the shop owner was no fan of the music, she did little to sell them, hiding the tapes behind other releases. Eventually one of those tapes fell into the hands of Ziad Rahbani, Fairuz’s son and a Lebanese musical institution in his own right. Ziad liked the music a lot and used to play on most of Ferkat Al Ard’s releases. And Issam also played on some of Ziad’s recordings and sessions. Nevertheless, the album was never known outside a very small scene of like-minded individuals and musicians of late 1970s Beirut.
Issam is fairly certain that less than 100 copies of the tape were made back then in total and he only managed to hang onto one copy himself, from which this recording was made.
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Let´s close with the 2020 LP by Richard Dawson. After his medieval 2017 masterpiece “Peasant” the themes are now more contemporary but the melodies, (dis)harmonies and lyrics are still so complex, other musicians would create a few albums of the ideas of just one Richard Dawson track. Chapeau!
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Ps.
One more for the road: Another Afro 7 single is out now to survive the grey berlin november days:
norberto Lobo / j.R.Bohannon / John Fahey / matana roberts / you´re not from around here OST/ black sun ensemble / g.rag / neil andersen / werther / castanets / cody Lee / labradaford / mount eerie
The title is a track by norberto lobo, whose amazing LP from 2014 I just rediscovered. A Masterpiece.
Essential reissue: Gnawa master Maleem Mahmoud Ghania meets spiritual jazz legend Pharaoh Sanders and it´ a milestone in western – eastern jazz collaborations. Until today only available on quite obscure tape, this is the first official (double) LP release by a Berlin based new label called Zehra.
Well done!
Zehra:
Available on vinyl for the very first time: “The Trance Of Seven Colors” by master Gnawa musician MALEEM MAHMOUD GHANIA and free jazz legend PHAROAH SANDERS. Produced by BILL LASWELL and according to The Attic “one of the most important albums of Gnawa trance music released in the ‘90s”.
Originally released in 1994 on BILL LASWELL’s AXIOM imprint, “The Trance Of Seven Colors” is the meeting of two true musical masters: MALEEM MAHMOUD GHANIA (1951 – 2015), son of the master of Gnawa music MALEEM BOUBKER GHANIA and the famous clairvoyant and “moqaddema” A’ISHA QABRAL, and a master of the traditional Gnawa style in his own right. MAHMOUD learned this craft as a youth along with his brothers, walking from village to village, performing ceremonies with his father BOUBKER and was one of the few masters (Maleem) who continued to practice the Gnawa tradition strictly for healing (the central ritual of the Gnawa is the trance music ceremony – with the purpose of healing or purification of the participants). With 30 cassette releases of music from the Gnawa repertoire with his own ensemble and performances at every major festival in Morocco, including performing for the King in various contexts, MAHMOUD GHANIA was also one of Morocco’s most prominent professional musicians.
In 1994, BILL LASWELL and PHAROAH SANDERS went to Mocrocco, equipped with just some mobile recording devices, to record GHANIA and a large ensemble of musicians (to a good part family members) in a very intimate set up at a private house with the legendary free jazz musician contributing his distinctive tenor saxophone sounds that gained him highest praise as a truely spiritual soul right from the days of playing with JOHN COLTRANE and his wife ALICE and on seminal solo albums like „Karma“.
The aptly titled „The Trance of Seven Colors“ ranks among the best Gnawa recordings ever released , made it onto the list of “10 incredible percussive albums from around the world” by Thevinylfactory.com and is 25 years after its original CD release on finally available on vinyl!
4 Stunden dauert der Film Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit von Thomas Heise, der seine Geschichte und der seiner Familie über fast 100 Jahre folgt.
Es ist eine Collage und mehr ein visualisierter Museumsbesuch – und doch denkt man am Ende, dass der Film noch viel länger hätte gehen können und fast etwas überstürzt abbricht. Insbesondere als er bereits 1992 über die Zeit nach der Wende und die Ausschreitungen der Neonazis in Rostock spricht die Gründe dafür brilliant analysiert, glaubt man sich an die heutige Realität erinnert.
Poetisch, episch und zeitlos mit immer eindrucksvollen, teils auch schwer auszuhaltenden Bildern, vergleichbar vielleicht nur mit Edgar Reitz´ Heimat Chronik.
Der Film läuft noch im Krokodil und im Wolf, vermutlich nur noch diese Woche.
joe le taxi